


We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

by JustRosey



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: The Great War, The Shelby brothers go to war, The WW1 fic no one asked for, Tunnelers, World War I, how Tommy became a sad boi, sad stuff, tw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-01-29 11:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 59,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21409582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustRosey/pseuds/JustRosey
Summary: Tommy and the other Peaky boys' experiences during World War I.I'm trying to be as accurate as possible, when it comes to dates and real, historical figures (yup Steven, I can do it too).The chapter titles will mostly be taken from WW1 poems or songs that I listened to while writing this.[Fic title taken from 'In Flanders Fields' by John McCrae ; Chapter title from "My name is carnival" by Jackson C. Frank]
Relationships: Arthur Shelby & Tommy Shelby, Greta Jurossi/Tommy Shelby, John Shelby & Tommy Shelby, Polly Gray & Tommy Shelby, Tommy Shelby & Freddie Thorne
Comments: 72
Kudos: 79





	1. (Prelude) I've seen your face in every place that I'll be goin'

AUGUST 1914 [BIRMINGHAM, SMALL HEATH]

“When will you leave?”

“Next week.”

“France?”

“France.”

“Just… Please don’t die, Tommy.”

His silence dragged on and filled the room until they were both holding their breaths, trying to will yet unspilled tears to not drop and cause the inevitable avalanche to follow. They had been there and it had not changed anything.

“Even if I will never know it - Promise me. Promise me you will come back alive.”  
Her voice broke in that horrible way that made him flinch every time it happened, as if someone had pricked him with a needle out of nowhere. She reached for his hand and squeezed it to make him feel a little better.

“What good is my promise if you’ll never know I kept it?”  
He gently squeezed her hand back.

“Maybe I will know? Maybe I’ll watch you?”

“Do you believe that, Greta?”

“I believe that you’re not meant to die in this war, Tom. What a waste that would be.”

“What else am I good for except defending my country? This is the first time in my life that I am not a fucking waste.”

Her coughing postponed an answer, and when she had caught her breath again, she didn’t bother answering anymore, didn’t want to fuel his constant self-loathing, but pulled him closer, closing her eyes to not see his blue, concerned ones. They both knew she couldn’t go on for much longer.

“I would ask you to promise me the same, but…”

He held his breath beside her. Held back the wave of sadness, the avalanche of tears.

“... but that would be selfish, eh?”

“You still haven’t promised me anything.”

He brought a hand up to her face, and she opened her eyes again, just as he leaned down to place a gentle kiss on her pale, clammy forehead. When his lips moved closer to hers, she wanted to stop him. He knew this was dangerous; they hadn’t done this in weeks.  
But she didn’t find it in her to stop him.

“I love you.”

“That’s still not a promise.”

“I promise.”

“I love you too, Tommy. Everything will be alright.”

When Tommy woke up in the middle of the night, he felt that he was alone, her body still beside his.  
He sat up, grabbed her arm, squeezed, shook her, begged her to wake up.  
She didn’t, not this time.  
But she had his word.


	2. When the tigers broke free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the Allies clashed with Germany on the French borders. At Mons, the British Army attempted to hold the line of the Mons–Condé Canal against the advancing German 1st Army. Although the British fought well and inflicted disproportionate casualties on the numerically superior Germans, they were eventually forced to retreat due both to the greater strength of the Germans and the sudden retreat of the French Fifth Army, which exposed the British right flank."  
(Source: Wikipedia)
> 
> Tommy, Arthur, and John have only just arrived in France and are slowly realizing they enlisted for one hell of a terrible time.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Pink Floyd's song "When the tigers broke free"]

23RD AUGUST 1914 [MONS]

“Tommy!”

Hearing Arthur’s voice clear and loud through the dawn and unnatural booms of artillery shells, Tommy shot around, glad to see his older brother in the confusing chaos of soldiers cramped into a tight trench.

“Tommy,” Arthur repeated when he reached him and gave him a hard pat on the shoulder. “You ready, brother?”  
Tommy nodded and Arthur guided him to one of the machine gun stands. Arthur was a good shot and had been assigned to find other men with a good aim and a steady hand. He wanted to give his brother the chance, even though he knew Tommy’s hands shook a little these days, but since the Vickers machine guns required a team of six to eight men to operate anyways, he thought Tommy would blend in just well.  
Just keep the kid brothers away from the bad stuff; as long as possible at least. That was Arthur’s only worry these days.  
The Germans had moved forward, trying to cross a bridge close to their stationing, and the British were not gonna let them of course.  
Tommy took his place behind one of the big machine guns, beside another young man; about John’s age maybe.  
“Mornin’,” he nodded at Tommy, who repeated the gesture. “You the lad to feed the ammo to the Vickers today? Arthur’s brother?”  
Tommy nodded again.

“Now, Tommy,” Arthur interrupted. “This is Barney. He’s insane. From Birmingham too. I’ve never seen the lad miss a shot. Not a single fucking one.”

“Impressive,” Tommy answered.

“No pressure,” Barney smiled.  
Tommy had a feeling he’d like him.  
When the Germans came closer and they opened the fire, he also saw that Arthur hadn’t promised too much. Barney shot and every single bullet seemed to take a man down, while Tommy had trouble even focusing his eyes on a target with the sheer amount of men storming the bridge.  
This kind of killing made no sense to him.  
Too easy.  
Too impersonal; too far away.  
No consequences. If he had to kill Germans, then he wanted to at least feel like he needed to muster up some strength to take a life. Not just… fire away at a mess of uniform-clad arms and legs. It made him shiver, how worthless and replaceable this kind of killing made lives appear.  
He quit after four hours.

“Tom, you know that… if you decline this, they will send you over the edge,” Arthur frowned at his brother, who dejectedly pulled at his suspenders.  
“Give John the chance and save him from going over the top in the first offensive,” was all Tommy said, before he left Arthur where he stood.

-

“I’m going over the top with you, Tommy,” John’s voice had an almost shrill quality to it, when he protested the offer of being spared from the offensive. “I’m a soldier, this is a bloody war, and if my brother can go over the edge, so can I.”

The conversation was over after that, and Tommy and John stood side by side in the trench, knees shaking, hearts racing, as they waited for the order to climb the ladders.

-

That night, none of the three brothers slept for a long time.  
Arthur had had tears in his eyes, when he had finally found Tommy and John both unwounded and alive. Tommy had stared him down angrily, told him to not be a wimp, and was chain smoking ever since. John was still so high on adrenaline he seemed to have lost control over everything, including the ability to form meaningful sentences.  
“Then another one, he fell - bullet right in the fucking eye. I wasn’t sure - he was like three feet from where I was and -”

“Shut up, John,” Tommy mumbled through the thick clouds of smoke engulfing his head. He was haunted by what he’d done only a few hours back. He had killed a man. A man who had already been on the ground. A man who had looked up at him with dark blue eyes overshadowed by a dirty blonde fringe, silently begging him to end it. He’d taken shots to the abdomen and both legs. Lay in a puddle of his own blood.  
Tommy had shot him in the head. Right between those blue, German eyes of his. He’d never seen brains pouring out of a man’s head before.

John was the first one to give in to sleep, while Tommy and Arthur sat silently opposite each other in the indents on each side of the trench.

“Would you have killed him, Tom? That man back home?” Arthur asked into the nightly silence.

“What man?” Tommy knew exactly what Arthur was talking about.

“That man on Bordesley Green Road. Back then… Man with the horse… you know, the whip-incident,” Arthur replied.

“Maybe.”

“You wouldn’t have, Tom!” Arthur burst out irritatedly.

“Why the fuck are you asking then?” Tommy spat back.

“Tommy, you know… Us three being here now… We gotta stick together, brother, aye? Gotta talk about the shit that’s happening. We can’t lose… sight of each other, I suppose? I… I’m worried, Tom,” Arthur rambled, the way he always did when someone had attacked him verbally.

“Right now we should get some sleep, Arthur.”

“Do you still miss her much? Greta, I mean,” Arthur continued, and that was it then. Tommy threw his cigarette forcefully to the ground and lifted his feet up on the ratty mattress.

“Just fuck off and sleep, Arthur.”

24TH OF AUGUST 1914

The retreat was inevitable.  
The Germans were pushing their lines back steadily, and they had trouble giving up the land fast enough, in order to not be overrun and lose even more men so early on in this nightmare of a war.  
The fields of Flanders were filled with the sounds of stomping hooves, and stepping boots, rattling carts, and the usual thunder of machine guns.  
Their unit was steadily marching towards saver grounds, soldier after soldier after soldier.  
Tommy kept his gaze trained to the flattened, sun-burnt grass below his boots, only occasionally looking up when a horse’s whinnying sounded particularly frightened.

The moment, one of the nearby bridges was overrun by German troops was probably the first of many worst moments in a lot of young British soldiers’ lives.  
Chaos.  
From one moment to the other.  
Utter chaos.  
Suddenly the roar of bullets being fired was much closer, and it sent men to the ground too now. Sporadically, seemingly by chance.  
Horses bolted and the carts they pulled tipped dangerously to the side or fell over completely, taking the scared animals to the ground with them.  
Men stood frozen in the vast field, waiting for something to happen; anything really. They were just kids, most of them.  
In that moment, when everyone else froze, Tommy started functioning. Where were the fucking lieutenants when they were needed?

He broke away from his line, heading for Barney a few rows behind him.

“We need the machine gun behind the bridge manned again,” he dragged Barney out of his stupor. “Five more men!” he barked at the dumbfoundedly staring lads around him and Barney.

The machine gun was ready to operate and the German approach was halted at last. Other men joined them, building a strong defence line.  
The rest of the troops had started to attempt something like damage control by trying to calm down the horses and lifting carts back up to a standing position.  
Tommy just wanted to shake his head at their fruitless tries, when he was almost trampled by a huge, white horse.  
His instinct took over, and he stood as tall as he could in front of the animal, throwing his arms up in the last second, to make it shy away from him.  
It worked, and Tommy stepped forward, grabbing for the reins.  
“Good girl,” he spoke calmly over the noise. “Good girl, you are. Shhhh. It’s just noise.”  
After half a minute of horse talk, Tommy had the mare where he wanted her. He used a fallen over cart beside them to get on her back, and steered her towards the front of the caravan of soldiers and carts.  
Naturally the other horses he passed calmed down at the sight of the white mare calmy trotting beside them, with that young man on top of her addressing the soldiers around them and giving orders.

Within 20 minutes, Tommy had managed to halt the German advance, for the moment at least, and had also managed to make around 400 men and 20 carts fit to be moved forward again.  
He had something, some sort of leadership in his eyes, something frightening even; their brother high up on a horse giving orders. Both Arthur and John were accepting his orders in awe, utterly stunned to silence.

-

Tommy was ordered to the commander’s tent that same evening, and his knees felt wobbly. He had gone too far, he was sure of it. Just not sure of what would happen to him now.

“Private Shelby reports, Sir,” he saluted, and tried not to cringe at the way his voice broke.

“At ease, soldier.”

The man had the eyes of an eagle, and Tommy had to think of his father. He hoped this would be over soon.  
“Word has reached me that you didn’t hesitate to take the initiative today. Upon being presented with a precarious situation.”  
The eagle man paused, fixing Tommy with his animalic glare, making him feel like prey.  
When Tommy made no move to answer, he continued.  
“Are you aware of what you did today, Shelby?”

Tommy swallowed against the dryness in his mouth.  
“Yes, Sir.”

“What do you think you did today?” It sounded like a proper accusation molded into a rhetorical question. He had fucked up, that’s what he’d done today. A proper fuck-up this was.  
Would they send him home now?  
Or would he be sent to another place? Separated from his brothers, and Freddie, and the other lads from Birmingham?  
He was honestly scared he’d piss himself, if he had to tolerate this man’s ‘bird-of-prey’ eyes on him for much longer.  
And now the commander was smiling in addition. Mocking him probably.  
Stupid kid from Birmingham thought he could play general for an afternoon.

“You do realise you saved hundreds of lives today, Shelby?” he was still smiling.  
Was this a trap?  
Word had indeed travelled quickly, but the men from his division had had only good words to spare for that young, blue-eyed Brummie boy on the white horse, and they had voted him into office for Sergeant Major.  
Tommy left the commander’s tent a while later with a title visible on his uniform, the nomination for a war medal, and un-pissed trousers.

They all got drunk that night and celebrated Tommy. He was even lifted up on Arthur and another bloke’s shoulders at some point.  
And still, he didn’t feel proud at all. All he could think of was the blue-eyed German, whose brains he had blown out the day before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Would mean a lot to me, if you told me what you think so far!


	3. Poppies whose roots are in man's veins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback and time jump ahead - beware!
> 
> I decided to do a chapter from Freddie Thorne's PoV, so here we go...  
We are now in the year 1915 and things are about to get dirty for Tommy and Freddie - you'll find out how I mean it.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from "Break of Day in the Trenches" by Isaac Rosenberg]

1901 [OUTSKIRTS OF BIRMINGHAM]

Freddie would always remember the strange colours of this specific September afternoon sky.  
It was covered in clouds but not the sleek and soft kind of clouds, no, rough ones, forming hills and valleys, creating a surface almost reminiscent of the earth’s up there above his head. The sun was sinking, not gone just yet, and the remaining light coloured the clouds in vibrant shades of orange and pink.  
He let himself indulge in this beauty for another second, before returning his attention to his best friend who was currently high up on a white horse, flying over the meadow.  
Tommy had dragged him out here right after school, telling him that his older cousins on his father’s side had three new horses, and that he was allowed to ride their old mare whenever he wanted now. Tommy never missed a chance to get up on a horse, while Freddie preferred to stay on the ground. He wasn’t exactly scared of those admittedly huge creatures (Tommy should therefore be even more scared than him), but he had a healthy amount of respect for them and not enough trust to be on their backs.

Neither of his concerns applied to Tommy.  
And Freddie did have to admit, he was an excellent rider.  
At eleven, his bare feet still barely reached the middle of the horse’s belly, and yet he never seemed to lose his balance, not even for a moment. His body was one with the horse. The sunlight shone in his eyes and made them seem translucent, pale skin shimmering under a thin sheen of sweat, static on his arms, pink mouth curled up in the slightest of smiles, and his breath rattling a little more still than it usually would.  
That spring flu damn near killed him, and Freddie frowned, when he remembered the weeks at school without Tommy and pestering Arthur afterwards, asking him, if his little brother was doing any better.  
At some point, he had almost given up on ever seeing him again, and that day Tommy had been back to school.  
Thin, pale, still too short for his age, and out of breath after as much as climbing up one floor to their classroom.  
He was glad seeing Tommy like this now.

Freddie grinned at him, when Tommy galloped towards him, arms stretched out wide to either side, not holding onto the horse’s mane at all, steering the mare under him by using the pressure of his thighs only.  
“A real gypsy bastard you are, Tommy,” Freddie laughed, getting up from the grass when the horse came a little too close for his liking.  
Tommy’s eyes still sparkled when he landed in the wet grass beside his friend, but Freddie was elbowed in the ribs anyways just a second later.  
“Shut up, Freddie.”

AUGUST 1915 [FLANDERS]

Freddie wasn’t sure why he had to think back to this day exactly, as their unit stood gathered in one of the broader trenches, trying to not let the unusually cold August rain weigh down their nonetheless sinking hearts.  
Maybe because it had been one of those special days, when Tommy had still known how to smile.  
Freddie found it hard to remember those instances.  
Especially since Greta and the war.  
He pushed the memory away.  
Recruiting announcements were to be made.  
“... good men to do important work,” he heard but focused on moving his cold, numb toes, “... opportunity,” in the mud clad boots. “... save many precious allied lives,” Freddie winced when pins and needles shot up his right ankle,  
“... for the 179th Tunneling Company.”  
He glanced over at Tommy who stood farther back and to the right and decided, the way his eyes had this far-away look, Tommy probably wasn’t listening either.  
But he was.

“We need men willing to work under difficult circumstances. Men unafraid to die trying to save hundreds of lives. Their brothers’ lives, their comrades’ lives, their people’s lives. The work I am advertising here today is dirty and dangerous but honorable. I’d ask the more slightly-built and shorter ones of you to volunteer, since it can feel a little crammed down there, boys,” the company’s Captain joked.  
Tommy didn’t smile. Not many of the other soldiers did. Freddie and a lot of them hadn’t even heard his joke in the first place.  
Captain Henry Hance, stood still on his stage of two wooden boxes on top of each other and scanned the crowd.  
“Now,” he began after a meaningful pause, “Who of you men are not afraid of the dark?”

The air grew thick and heavy with the soldiers’ silence.  
Not a single mouth opened, not one tongue spoke its name. No one wanted to be swallowed by the ground.  
“Who volunteers for the 179th Tunneling Company?” Captain Henry Hance roared into the men’s empty faces. His voice had lost its amiable quality now. He was trying to embarrass them with their own cowardly silence.  
Just when he thought he’d leave another unit without any new volunteers, a name convinced him otherwise.

“Thomas Shelby, Captain. I volunteer.”

Freddie heard the world around him again, his heart sank into his trousers.

The Captain looked up. He wasn’t sure where the calm, dark voice had come from.  
“Step forward, soldier,” he commanded.

“Tommy, no,” Freddie whispered when his friend pushed through the rows of soldiers.  
Tommy didn’t look at him.  
This bastard couldn’t just leave and not even look at him one last time.

Tommy stepped before the captain, firm stance, head held high, eyes dead, and face unreadable.  
'A short one he is', the Captain thought to himself, 'and young, but he’s got big hands and strong arms and there’s something in his eyes.'  
He felt the man’s presence; there was something reckless about him. His uniform labeled him a Sergeant Major.

Freddie’s lips didn’t comply with their orders at first.  
He was speechless, trying to breathe in and out without choking on his own saliva.

“Frederick Thorne, Captain.”

They did obey him after all.  
Tommy would just end up getting himself killed. They all would.  
But he’d look Freddie in the eyes again before that happened, and Freddie would get him to smile one of those good smiles again before that too.  
Even if there would be no sky above their heads when he did so.


	4. When you're in the trenches and you're under fire I will cover you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy goes to meet John, who's been shot. He has to tell him that he's going to be a tunneler.  
Oh and we'll meet Danny this chapter. I love him... and I love John  
WHY DID YOU KILL THEM, STEVEN?!?!?
> 
> (Chapter title taken from "Brother" by Kodaline)

That night, Tommy knew he had to go and see John.  
He had been shot in the thigh during the second offensive at Ypres and was about to be released from the field hospital.  
Finishing his cigarette outside the tent, Tommy braced himself for his little brother’s face of disappointment and betrayal. Arthur had had no choice in February. He had simply been shipped off to Gallipoli. This was different. Tommy had volunteered.

“Tommy boy,” John’s energetic voice greeted him about halfway down the long row of makeshift hospital beds. “Could’ve brought some flowers, eh? Bouquet of poppies from Flanders fields, no?”  
Tommy forced a smile, feeling relieved John seemed to have recovered well enough to be discharged after all. He was the one able to deal with this bloody war the best anyways.

“What’s wrong, brother?” John asked, sensing Tommy’s discomfort at the conversation ahead, but not yet abandoning his bright smile. Not yet.

“John,” Tommy started and in that very moment it hit him; he was the only brother who had not been shot yet. Arthur had had taken a graze at Mons, had been shot once at home too, and John had had a bullet embedded in his thigh at Ypres. He had got away so far. And now he was going to disappear in the ground like a fucking coward.  
Except no one seemed to think of these men as cowards. Why, he didn’t really understand yet. Going over the top into battle still seemed worse than going underground beneath no-man’s land.

“... Tommy?” John snickered like a five year-old. Was he still on drugs for the pain, or could anyone actually be so unphased by this hell on earth?

“I volunteered, John,” Tommy burst out. “I volunteered for the tunnels.”

John stared at him, his smile slipped from his young, boyish face. Tommy forced himself to keep looking him in the eyes.

“You fucking what?”

Tommy blinked slowly but held his gaze.

“Tommy, you fucking what? You fucking volunteered to die in the fucking ground?” John seemed slightly hysterical, judged by the amounts of ‘fuck’ in his sentences. “Tom, those men are spent after a few months. Fucking spent like bullets. They’ve got the worst bloody job of all. I’d rather go over the edge and fight 50 fucking Germans on me own, than do what they have to do.” He paused. “Where will the send you to?”

“They’ll train us not too far from here,” Tommy mumbled, eyes now fixed on the ground. “Then we’ll be sent to wherever we’re needed most.”

“When?”

Tommy guiltily looked up at his younger brother.

“When are you leaving?” John asked, and now it was his turn to cast his eyes down.

“Tomorrow.”

Tommy spent half the night by John’s bedside. After his initial outburst, John calmed down, adjusted to the situation. They talked about stupid childhood memories, like back when they used to steal biscuit from the bakery around Christmas, and how Arthur had got caught every single time. Or the one time they had used Polly’s red lipstick to give Tommy a fake head wound, but she had seen through it right away, and they all ended up with a burning red cheek.

“Oi, Tommy,” John called after him, when his older brother had just got up and said his goodbyes. “Don’t get yourself killed down there. Too deep for a grave those tunnels.”

Tommy just nodded and walked into the night.

-

The following day, he and Freddie packed what little belongings they had and set off with their new superior.  
Tommy wasn’t exactly talkative.  
Even less than usually.  
He ignored Freddie, silently blaming his friend for volunteering too. The fool. Was he ever capable of doing something on his own?  
A small part of him (a part small enough to be ignored almost entirely) was glad Freddie trotted right behind him, towards an unknown future.

When they reached the tunnels, they suddenly found themselves amongst a big crowd of men. The companies’ captains announced they were to be assigned into groups of three, plus one experienced tunneller for the first while, to show them how the job was to be done.  
Tommy found himself paired up with Freddie for convenience, and they were joined by another man from Birmingham, Daniel Owen.

“Call me Danny,” he grinned, extending his hand to Freddie first and then Tommy. “One hell of a job this will be, eh?” he joked in a thick Brummie accent that made both Tommy and Freddie miss home a little more.  
Tommy had seen his face before, somewhere in Small Heath.

“I know your face,” Danny said, before Tommy could introduce himself or tell him the same thing. “You’re one of the Shelby brothers.”  
Maybe he remembered him from school. Danny’s face had something very young about it, yet they found out he was one year older than the both of them and he towered over them like a tree too. He had a wife and kids back home too, making Tommy and Freddie feel like kids for their lack of sweethearts. Or official lack thereof.

“I’m Thomas,” Tommy simply answered, still uncertain where he had seen Danny before.  
“Thomas Shelby then, eh?” Danny pondered. “Heard that name a lot on the streets during the past few years. You and your family are… an infamous people around Small Heath.”  
He looked a little haunted; Freddie rolled his eyes beside Tommy.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning by sunrise,” Danny tried a small smile after an uncomfortable moment of silence and turned around.

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me Tommy, alright?”

“Alright, Tommy,” a small pause. “We’re all Tommies these days, aye?”  
Another one of those big, kind smiles, showing off the gap between his front teeth.  
Freddie and Tommy snorted at his joke.

“Us boys prefered PBI at our last stationing, Danny,” Freddie laughed.

“That’s a new one to me,” Danny grinned. “What’s it mean?”

“Poor bloody infantry,” Tommy chuckled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fact, but no Fun Fact: Apparently soldiers in the British Army were called 'Tommies'. There had been a soldier named “Tommy Atkins” who was killed early in battle or something, and his name ended up as an example of an average British soldier.
> 
> Would make my day If you'd leave a comment!


	5. Fell into another hole again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First time in the tunnels and Tommy's not exactly having a great time.  
Oh, and Kitty Jurossi makes a very short appearance.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Bring me the Horizon's "Sleepwalking"]

Kicker, Bagger, Trammer.

That was what a tunneller trio consisted of.  
The man who took them down the holes the next morning was a small grey-haired, middle-aged Welsh man with a mad grin and little patience.

“Fuck’s sake, Shelby,” he cursed, when Tommy had yet another coughing fit in the dimly lit hole. “You ain’t gonna get old down here.”  
Tommy held the coughs back at those words. The walls were coming closer, his head was spinning, his hands were shaking. He understood now, why no one volunteered for this fucking ordeal of a job. Why was he doing this to himself again? He wanted a bloody cigarette so badly.  
His hands almost slipped from the damp, wooden ladder, prompting his heart to throb painfully against his ribs.  
He desperately needed that smoke to calm himself down. Fuck.  
No smoking. Too much dynamite in risk of exploding before it should.  
That had been the announcement this morning, which had already made Tommy panic. Slightly.  
The one thing that managed to calm him down. Kept his shaking hands busy.  
“Your hands are gonna be busy enough down here. No need for fags,” their supervisor had laughed at him, when he fished the smuggled pack of cigarettes from Tommy’s back pocket before he had let him enter the tunnels.  
Tommy had a feeling he’d die deep down in a bloody hole after all, having escaped that fate once before. He felt like he couldn't breathe. He’d die hundreds of feet below the ground in a dirty, dark hole too deep for a grave. If only he had his cigarettes to keep him from feeling like the 13 year old boy again.  
‘Calm down, Tom,’ he thought and clenched his jaws. He was no coward. He wasn’t scared of the dark. He could do this. He’d promised John, and he wouldn’t need damned cigarettes to try and keep this promise.

-

1903 [BIRMINGHAM]

"97, 98, 99, 100! I'm coming!"

Tommy heard Kitty's voice far away in the distance. He had wandered off far enough to be out of sight to have more time to find a good hiding place. Freddie had wanted to come with him so they could hide together but Tommy had refused and simply ran off before Freddie could start a discussion about it. He liked doing things on his own sometimes. Freddie could never do things alone it seemed. And anyways, he was actually too old to play something as silly as hide and seek.  
The soft forest soil felt warm underneath his bare feet and the stray rays of sun reaching him through the thick branches warmed his cheeks. Freddie had teased him all day that a patch of freckles on his left cheek looked like a love heart, and Tommy didn't quite know how to react. Kitty had agreed and touched his face, tracing the imaginary lines between the freckles, and Tommy had blushed bright red. This just kept on happening lately and he didn't know why. Never when he was with his brothers or sister, but only ever when he was with Kitty and her sister or Freddie.

Lost in his thoughts, Tommy strolled deeper into the forest thicket, until the ground under his feet suddenly gave way and someone switched off the lights.

When he woke up it was dark and he couldn't make sense of his surroundings.  
His clothes were wet, the ground was hard, and the sun was gone.  
It took Tommy's eyes some time to get used to the darkness and figure out where he was.  
Damp stonewalls at least 10 feet high surrounded him and through thick leaves, grass and branches he could still catch a tiny glimpse of the afternoon sunlight above.  
He was sitting in a bloody well.  
Trying to get to his feet, a wave of nausea sent him back to the hard ground, and he noticed something warm covering the side of his head. His fingers came back coated in blood and the room started spinning.  
Wiping his hand on his wet trouser, he told himself to stay calm. If he wanted to climb up that shaft, he had to get his vision and sense of balance back under control. He was getting out of here, and he was not going to scream for help to achieve that.

"Deep breaths. In and out." That was what Polly had always said, when he had had a nightmare and woke up scared and dizzy. It helped and after a few minutes Tommy was able to get up and test the walls for any useful projections he could hold onto. He managed to reach the middle of the well, before he lost his footing and came crashing down on the hard, wet floor a second time. He tried and tried and tried, again, and again, until his strength was gone, and his whole body hurt and trembled from exhaustion. The shimmer of sunlight was weakening and once complete darkness surrounded him he started screaming for help. No one heard him.

His voice went hoarse from screaming, he started shivering in his sweat-drenched clothing, and the dizziness came back. If he had let Freddie come with him, none of this would have happened. Even if he had fallen down the well, Freddie would have known and could have gone to get help.  
He must have fallen asleep at some point. There was a lot of water in his dream and he couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, couldn't fucking breathe. A warm, wet sensation traveling down his right leg woke Tommy up, and once he made sense of what it was, he didn't care about the tears rolling down his cheeks anymore either.  
His reason came back after a while of just cowering and crying.  
"Think, Tom. Fucking think."

He had no sense of time anymore, when he realized he could see the stone wall opposite him clearly again and heard voices above calling out his name.

-

“Try to distract yourself,” Freddie suddenly whispered in his ear, bringing him back to reality and handing him two handfuls of mud. “We’ll get used to it, Tommy. It’s going to be alright.”  
Tommy nodded his head at Freddie, blue eyes still wide with anxiety, and he knew he should tell Freddie some time that he was glad he was here with him after all.

“Thorne, you get on the cross now,” the grey-haired man announced.  
The cross was the contraption the kicker sat on, while he shoved his kicking iron into the earth in front of him with his feet. Then the bagger carefully took the loosened earth from the shovel and passed it on to the trammer, who’d pass it on farther or get it out of the way for the time being. All of that without making a sound.  
It had been Danny’s first try on the cross before, and if you asked their supervisor, he did a terrible job.  


When it was Tommy’s turn, he was actually calm enough from grabbing for dirt and passing it on, he felt eager to try this, possibly a little more interesting task. Being the shortest of the three, his body fit the cross nicely, his back resting more or less comfortably against it. He pushed the iron in without a sound, just deep enough to loosen a nice brick of muddy clay. He kept going for a long time, and their teacher let him. The tunnel around them grew quiet enough for them to almost hear the flickering of the candle, which was always lit in order to warn the men in case of lack of oxygen or a gas attack.  
Tommy felt relief flood his veins. The work was hard but it had an almost meditative quality to it. His legs were burning from the constant pushing forward, but it was alright. His feet felt warm for the first time since he had landed in France.

“Now,” the older man finally broke the silence, “We need to secure the part of the tunnel you dug so far.” He grabbed for the wooden planks stored at the side of the cross, and showed them how it was done.

That night, when they crawled out of their hole, like all the other tunnellers, the three men felt exhausted and glad to see the night sky.  
They almost couldn’t stand upright anymore after just one day of crawling in the claustrophobic tunnels, and they wanted to do nothing more than sleep.

“Shelby.”

Tommy turned around just in time to catch the small, square object the grinning, grey-haired man tossed at him.

“Good work, Shelby.”

Recognising the object in his dirty, shaking hands as his pack of cigarettes, a small smile formed on Tommy’s lips, and he lit one of them before stumbling in the general direction of their night camp.  
He filled his lungs with burning smoke and hoped he wouldn’t go mad down there in those tunnels.  
One day.  
One day lay behind them so far and it already felt like half an eternity underground.  
The night sky was starless that night, and Freddie was the only one to notice, when he waited for his best friend to take his place on the bed beside his.

-

The days passed and turned into weeks, weeks turned into months.  
The three men got used to the task.  
They hadn’t been clean or dry for such a long time now, they felt like all that dirt couldn’t ever come off of them anymore, and their fingernails were black from earth and blood.  
All three of them had become accustomed to their day-to-day task.  
Tommy naturally climbed the cross right away every morning; they had established everyone’s most efficient position in the team: Danny as bagger, taking the pieces of clay from where Tommy’s kicking iron loosened them, and Freddie as trammer, being handed the earthen brick from Danny, putting it into a sack and piling it onto a tray to be dragged out of the tunnel.  
Every day, Freddie, Tommy, and Danny climbed up the ladder for lunch, their tummies rumbling so violently, they feared the Germans could hear it all the way.  
After eating and resting for a short while, they descended into the tunnels again, until they were informed to stop and come back up for a small dinner. Then go to sleep; wake up by sunrise. Repeat.  
It was a merciless cycle, but the three of them got along well enough to make it bearable.  
Danny was a real clown, always a joke up his sleeve, Freddie was still the hopeless optimist as ever, and Tommy warmed up to both of them and some evenings he’d try to teach them how to blow cigarette smoke out in a circle or how to roll a coin across their knuckles.  
He thought he was as happy as he could ever be here in France.  
This was as happy as he’d ever be again.  
He caught himself forgetting about Greta some days until nightfall.  
Her face wasn’t all that vivid a memory in his head anymore.  
He still missed her, but the knowledge that he might just follow her one of these days felt strangely comforting.

The men got used to the task, and that was when they were taken away and brought to the place where they were desperately needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Tommy totally fell into a well as a kid, and volunteering for the tunnels, despite being traumatized by tight shafts sounds perfectly like the self-loathing bastard he is. I love him. He definitely blushed a lot too.
> 
> Tell me what you think!


	6. Shovels beat the sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy, Freddie and Danny have arrived at the Somme and the tunnels they dig here will be a lot more important and bring devastation to both sides of the war.
> 
> There's a letter from home, some alone-time for Tommy, and shovels making their first, grand appearance.

OCTOBER 1915 [LA BOISELLE, THE SOMME]

The ground was different here.  
Harder.  
After only two weeks of working the earth of the Somme, Tommy’s hands shook almost constantly. He had cut himself shaving that morning.  
He wasn’t sure, if it was because of the hard work, or the thought of the burden placed onto the shoulders of soldiers in the now officially existent 179th Tunneling Company.  
‘Clay Kickers’ they were called these days.  
Their orders were to sink a series of deeper shafts than the existing ones into the unforgiving ground, in order to stop the Germans from approaching the British front line.  
The shaft Tommy, Freddie, and Danny were working in was labeled ‘W Shaft’, and within a short amount of time it had been deepened from 30 ft to a depth of 80 ft.  
They did night shifts now as well. There was too much on the line. Quite literally.  
When they had reached the depth of 80 ft, the orders were to drive two counter-mines towards the German mine. Tommy and his team were assigned to the right-hand gallery.

That day, Tommy was driving the kicking iron into hard, chalky ground that seemed to be mocking their efforts like any other day, but when he crawled out of the claustrophobic hole at midday, Freddie and Danny close behind, he was notified that there was a letter waiting for him.

“Shelby,” one of the superior officers seemed to have waited for him already. “A letter came for you. Report to Captain Hance’s tent.”

Tommy trotted off right away, his hunger entirely forgotten, replaced by a tight knot of worry in the pit of his stomach.  
Receiving a letter at the front or from the front was a little like flipping a coin these days; it could either be one of your loved ones brightening your day with warm words and wishes, or the notification of a tragic death.

Stepping into the tent, Tommy saluted Captain Hance.  
“Private Shelby reporting, Captain.”

“At ease, soldier,” Hance motioned him to step forward. He remembered the young man once those big, blue eyes fixated on him. They seemed however less dead that day, worry clearly written across them.  
He handed him the letter.  
It had been sent from Turkey, Gallipoli.

Arthur.

Tommy swallowed and the realisation that he was still stood in front of his Captain dawned on him. He pushed the letter in the pocket of his muddied trousers, balling his shaking hands into fists.  
“You’re dismissed, soldier,” Hance sighed. “I hope it’s not bad news, Shelby. Far too many letters from Gallipoli are bad news these days.”  
Tommy saluted automatically, turned on his heel, and was out of the tent a little too quickly.

-

“Tommy should be back by now,” Freddie mumbled more to himself, craning his neck to check if a familiar, dark shock of hair was to be seen anywhere closeby.  
“Think his letter was bad news?” Danny asked, not stopping to wolf down his ration of stew.  
“Hope not,” Freddie answered, abandoning his half- eaten bowl and getting up. “You can finish mine too, Danny.”

It didn’t take Freddie long to find him.  
Tommy sat smoking on top of a rock beside the entrance to their tunnel, absentmindedly scratching at the cut on his cheek with his free hand.  
When Freddie sat down beside him, he noticed that Tommy’s cigarette had been smoked down to a small, miserable stump. He didn’t waste a single drag these days.  
Just when Freddie thought he couldn’t stand the silence any longer, Tommy spoke.

“Arthur’s injured.”

Freddie exhaled audibly.  
“They’re sending him back to France after he’s recovered enough. Maybe they’ll send him straight back home. Took four bullets.”  
The cigarette was almost too small to be held between Tommy’s thumb and pointer finger now. He somehow managed one last drag, before throwing it away.

“Four fucking bullets.”

Freddie didn’t register him getting up and disappearing into their hole. When Danny showed up a few minutes later, they followed him down into the darkness.

19TH NOVEMBER 1915 [LA BOISELLE, THE SOMME]

Tommy was up early on this cold, clear Friday morning, smoking his first, shaky cigarette on the way to the Army Post Office.  
He was concerned that there were still no news from Arthur, but Polly had written.

Tommy snuck back into his and Freddy’s dugout, stepping over his friend’s sleeping form and snuggling up in his filthy but warm blanket once more. The sun would soon rise, but he would still have some time to himself.

*Dear Tommy,

Ada is stood here right beside me, ready to head out to work, but insisting I first write that she says hello and misses you very much. She barely let me write down the salutation.*

Tommy couldn’t help but smile a little, imagining his 18 year old sister pestering Aunt Polly to write down that she says hello, impatient like a little kid.

*Everything’s alright here in Birmingham. Ada has taken up a temporary job at the BSA to earn us some more money. You wouldn’t believe what little bets we have coming in these days, Tommy. Seems people have given up on gambling. Maybe it’s because women are not prone to gambling just as much, and most men are gone, because the King’s gambling their lives away in his name. I hope this letter won’t get censored now.*

After this Tommy felt himself snort an almost laugh at Polly’s snarky comment. He could almost hear her say this out loud.

*We have heard about Arthur, as you must have too. God knows I pray for you boys every single day. Ask him to bring all three of you back alive and in one piece. Arthur might be sent home, and I can’t help but be grateful about that. We could use a man back in the house. Don’t get me wrong, Thomas, Finn is trying his best to be a man, and it is the only hilarious thing in me and Ada’s lives right now. I just wish*

Polly had stopped writing there, crossed out one or two words. Tommy tried to decipher them anyways but failed.

*You could write back once in a while, Tommy. You are the only one we’ve not received a letter from, and God knows how much I fear receiving letters these days, but it’d be nice to have one from you and not one from your superiors telling us the worst. I didn’t think you’d be the lazy one writing letters back. Even John wrote.*

Tommy rolled his eyes at the second mentioning of God in Polly’s letter, and he knew he’d not answer this one either.

*Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Tommy. We love you. Come home.

Polly*

Knowing that at home everything was alright was… something.  
Tommy reached for the tin box under his makeshift pillow. He kept all of the letters he received, but writing one in return seemed impossible to him.

The sun rose too soon, and Tommy, Freddie and Danny only had a few mere minutes to warm their faces in her weak, wintery glow, before they descended into darkness.  
Tommy was cold to the bones and shivering before they even reached the bottom of the shaft. The damp and icy cold had finally found its way down there too.  
They reached their destination at the very front of the right-hand gallery and continued with their work quietly for a few hours, until… 

Shovels.

Danny heard them first, when he grabbed a brick of loosened clay from Tommy’s shovel.

“Shhh,” he hissed.

“What’s the matter, Danny?” Tommy whispered slightly annoyed, but nevertheless careful.

“You starting to hear voices, Danny boy?” Freddie chuckled from behind them.

“Shhh! Can’t you hear it?” Danny asked anxiously.

“Hear what?” Tommy grumbled, wanting to push his own shovel into the ground in front of him already again.

“No, stop,” Danny hissed, holding Tommy’s shovel back. “Listen.”  
So they listened.  
After getting used to the sound of their own heavy breathing, Tommy and Freddie noticed it too.  
Small, scrapy sounds against the soil on the other side. And voices.  
An almost inaudible “Fuck,” escaped Freddie’s lips, and the three men looked at each other. They needed to report this.

“What if they break through while we’re not down here?” Danny asked in a hysterical voice, as they climbed up the steep ladder leading down to the W Shaft.

“Your question should rather be, ‘what if they had broken through while we were still down there all on our own’, Danny,” Tommy answered in a calm voice. “But they’re not breaking through any time soon. They’re at least 10 yards away, I think. Probably even more.”

-

They reported their observation to Captain Henry Hance without telling any of the other soldiers about it for the time being. If they had been wrong, if their senses had betrayed them down there, nobody else necessarily needed to be scared shitless, beginning to imagine the sound of German shovels coming closer.  
The Captain did something, the three men had not expected him to do; he got up, discarded his decorated jacket, and climbed down into the tunnels with them.  
All three of them really hoped they hadn’t misheard at that point.

“I hear it.”

Then they didn’t know if they should feel relieved or terrified after the Captain’s statement.

-

The Captain had all the men gathered in the field above the tunnels and announced the new strategy. The Germans were only an estimated 15 yards away from the British tunnels and had hopefully stayed oblivious to that fact for now. He ordered the digging to be stopped, and tunnels were to be filled with 6000 lb of explosives. In absolute silence.  
So that’s what the men did during the following two nights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'd be super happy if you told me what you think!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. In that rich earth a richer dust concealed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Big chapter ahead, folks...  
It gets very real with the PTSD-producing events in this, and Barney is back even though it's not f*cking Wednesday today.  
The dates are real btw, this explosion and tunnel collapse really happened, and 28 men were buried and died. (Three dug themselves out in this, but you know that already.)
> 
> [Chapter title taken from "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke

21ST / 22ND NOVEMBER 1915 [LA BOISELLE, THE SOMME]

By midnight on the 20th to 21st of November the tunnels and chambers were packed to the brim with explosives.  
Tommy, Freddie, and Danny were one of the teams selected for the next night shift, and subsequently the detonation of the dynamite in the early morning hours.

Tommy found that he couldn’t eat all day. He felt sick, cold, restless.  
He had smoked all of his cigarettes and nothing else seemed to be able to distract him from his shaking hands. Freddie stayed close to him all day, tried to coax him into resting up for a few more hours.  
“Tom… Tommy,” he tried. When his friend still didn’t respond he nudged his shoulder. “We should try to sleep for a bit. We’ll be up all fucking night and we shouldn’t exactly be sleepwalking down there. Not tonight.”  
Tommy wordlessly slumped down on the bed and turned demonstratively away from Freddie.  
“It’s getting to me too, man, you know,” Freddie mumbled but let him be.

Evening came, and by nightfall the trio found themselves descending into the tunnels. Tommy felt a lot better. Why, he couldn’t say, but sleep had helped, and a strange excitement for seeing some of their work serve its purpose had settled in the pit of his stomach. He tried not to think of the German men in the tunnels, because he knew well enough that they were men just like him, volunteering to fight for their country. The war wasn’t their fault but they were the ones paying with their lives for it. His initial excitement vanished quickly after that thought.

They executed their task quickly and quietly. By midnight, the explosives in the chambers were attached to a plunger detonator and ready to blow up the Germans, but Captain Hance wanted to wait.  
Wait until the Germans took up their work again in the morning. The men that had worked the night shift so far were told to stay in the tunnels and keep their eyes and ears, mostly ears, open.

“The waiting is killing me,” Danny sighed, sitting with his back against the wood, close to the ladder that led down to the W Shaft. “Why can’t Captain Hance blow the charge right now, eh? Few less German men dead maybe, but we could at least get some proper sleep.”

“Shut up, Danny,” Tommy replied. He wasn’t in the mood for banter. He needed a cigarette. “Orders are not to be questioned by us.”

“Fuck those orders,” Freddie spit. He was in an even worse mood than Tommy by now, and that was not something to happen often. “All those glorious men up their in their clean, fucking uniforms want is to brag about how many men died in one of their campaigns. What would they do without us? It’s us poor, bloody moles who dug those fucking tunnels in the first place, and those Germans on the other side are no better, nor worse than us. Just another bunch of poor, worthless fuckers but with a different mother tongue. That’s all.”

“Shut up both of you,” Tommy shouted. He was starting to feel tired again, and their talking was starting to give him a headache. Maybe he should get up and move around a little he thought. Get his blood flow going again, move his heavy limbs. Not much else to do until daybreak, and he certainly didn’t want to put up with this conversation. “I’ll check the gallery.”  
With that he got up and moved down in the direction of the right-hand gallery. Freddie and Danny let him. It wasn’t a good idea to follow Thomas Shelby anywhere when he was in a mood like that.

When he reached the end of the tunnel he himself had dug with his team, he sat down, leaned against the wall. Breathed.  
He wondered, if he could stay down here between the tons of dynamite and just wait for it all to go up in flames. He wanted this to be over.  
For a moment down there, his breathing got frantic, heart beat racing, and he allowed himself to cry.  
Just because it felt alright there, alone in the dark, 80 ft below the ground in a tunnel that wouldn’t exist anymore in a few hours.  
Tommy only swallowed the sobs down and wiped at the escaped tears, when his ears registered noises.

No, not noises. Words.

“Hörst du das?”

Silence.

“Jetzt nicht mehr. Aber da war irgendwas, oder irgendwer.”

Tommy’s chest felt tight. He didn’t dare to breath.  
They were so damn close, it sounded like they were separated by the thin wall of an English house. Like back home, years ago, when he’d always hear baby Finn wake up in the night and scream for the mother that was no longer there.

“Wahrscheinlich die Nachtschicht. Komm jetzt. Du kennst den Befehl. Tunnel räumen, bevor hier alles in die Luft fliegt oder die da drüben gar noch vorher durchbrechen.”

The voices seemed farther away now, and Tommy scrambled to his feet. He had never been in a tunnel fight before, and he didn’t want tonight to be his first. All he had understood were the words ‘night shift’, ‘tunnel’, and ‘Befehl’ - ‘order’. Not much to make of that, but holy sweet Jesus, they were so close. Too damn close.  
He arrived at Freddie and Danny’s spot looking like he’d seen a ghost.

“Oi, Tom,” Freddie snorted. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

“Certainly whiter than any of our shirts will ever be again,” Danny giggled, apparently half asleep.

“They’re so fucking close, Freddie. One yard, two at most. They’ll break through any time,” Tommy stammered, heading for the ladder followed by Freddie. “We have to tell the Captain. He needs to move up the fucking timeline or -”

The deafening crash seemed to cancel time; a devastatingly long second passed, and Tommy knew that German ears must've heard their shovels too.  
Then there was no air for them to breathe. The last bit of it was squeezed from their lungs.

First they felt splinters of bursting wood pierce their skin, then the world went dark, and Tommy, Freddie, and Danny choked on mud and ash.  
.  
.  
.  
He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.  
Curled up into a ball, he realized with horror that he seemed to be alive.

For fuck’s sake.

Now he’d have to wait for death to come find him buried under all that mud?

Experimentally he tried to move his right arm forward. The soil seemed dense, but not as compressed as he’d expected it to be.

Dig.

His left arm shot forward as well, every movement hurt like hell, and he didn’t know how, but his small hole got bigger and bigger.

Dig.

The air was running out anyways though. His panicked wheezing didn’t help with that either. Was there any air at all?

Just fucking dig, Tommy.

Dig.

His right hand felt cold suddenly. He didn’t realize why.

Dig.

When his left hand painfully bashed against a wooden bar, he grabbed it and tried to pull himself up.  
Suddenly there was another set of hands.

“Tommy!”

He couldn’t see.

“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!”

The hands grabbed him below the shoulders. Tommy tried to blink the earth from his eyes. It stung and the world was too blurry.

“Fuck!”

Tommy’s eyes had finally adjusted to their surroundings again, and he saw that he was sat on a huge pile of earth in W Shaft, a dirty, bleeding Freddie Thorne in front of him. His guts clenched and he started retching. He choked up black stuff from either his tummy or his lungs, or both.

“Fuck, where’s Danny!”

Freddie was digging again. With his bare hands.  
Tommy looked at his own left hand and saw that a splinter of wood had pierced his palm. He turned his hand around.  
The splinter was sticking out on the other side as well. He threw up into his own lap, warm, black vomit soaking his muddy trousers.

“We need help!” Freddie screamed, and finally another two men appeared beside them in the shaft.  
When Tommy had collected himself enough to be able to grasp the situation, he pulled the splinter from his hand and started digging too.

They dug for what felt like ages, but was probably little over three minutes, when they came across Danny’s right boot. And thank God, the rest of Danny was still attached to it.  
The group of soldiers that had joined them in the shaft had to help them up the ladder; an unconscious Danny being lifted up to the surface first, Freddie and Tommy following shortly after.

24TH NOVEMBER 1915 [ÉTAPLES; FIELD HOSPITAL]

They had been lucky.  
So fucking lucky.

“Is that Thomas Shelby over there? Damn, I thought I’d never see one of you Shelbys again!”

The voice found him in the uncomfortable darkness that surrounded him. Not quite painful but on the brink of it.

“Oi, Sergeant Major, wake up.”

He knew the voice but couldn’t place it in his intermediate state between being awake and unconscious. His eyelids felt heavy, glued together. A warm hand cupped his shoulder.

“Should’ve stuck to the work above ground.”

Tommy’s eyelids fluttered, and he found himself staring up into warm, brown eyes belonging to a familiar face.

“You were bloody lucky, you and your team. 28 men died down there, just you three got out of the hole. Cheer up, Sergeant Major, you are a lucky man and the nurses here are a godsend!” Barney grinned, patting Tommy’s battered shoulder gently. Everything fucking hurt.

“Barney?” Tommy would have flinched at the weak, raspy sound of his own voice, but his body didn’t possess excess energy for something like that. “What are ye…” breathing demanded his full focus suddenly, but Barney could answer him anyways.

“Got shot. A week ago. Nothing too bad, and I am quite enjoying my stay so far! Heard you volunteered for the tunnels from John… You're all a bit mad, you Shelbys, eh?”

“John. You... seen him? How-”

“How he is? Oh, he’s bloody thriving! At least he was when I last saw him. Months ago now but he’d been killing Germans left and right and drinking with the big boys at night.” Tommy had had to close his eyes again, but he sensed someone else being closeby now. “Yes, I think he could need some of that, Jeanne,” Barney addressed the person, and before Tommy could muster up the strength to open his eyes once more, his head was gently lifted off the pillow.  
He gulped down the offered water greedily, blinking kind of foolishly at the beautiful, strawberry blonde girl holding the cup for him. When he had finished, she carefully guided his head back to the pillow and stroked his fringe out of his eyes.

“Did I promise too much?” Barney whispered with a boyish grin after Jeanne had left to take care of the other patients. Tommy snorted. He had stared at her and Barney was not blind, so he could tell. Presently, he was more concerned about being able to feel more and more parts of his body, and not in a pleasant way. His left arm was strapped to his chest, the hand a little too tightly bandaged and throbbing painfully. The thought of the splinter going all the way through made his guts clench. Moving his left shoulder, as much as that was possible anyways, sent painful stings across his collarbone and neck. The pain must’ve shown on his face because Barney got up from the chair beside Tommy’s bed, whispering: “Rest up, Sergeant Major. They’ll take good care of you.”

-

When Tommy next woke up from a fitful bout of sleep, the young nurse was back at his bedside, changing the bandage on his hand. His body felt numb, and Tommy silently thanked the universe for that.

“Is it too… uhm… what do you call it?” the nurse interrupted his thoughts with her unmistakably French accent. “Tight?”

Tommy needed an embarrassingly long moment to realise that she was referring to his freshly bandaged hand.

“No, it’s fine. Thank you.”  
It was too tight again.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a smile, getting up from the chair.  
“A bit.”  
He was not.

A minute later, Jeanne came back carrying a tray, which she gently placed on the blankets covering Tommy. It was soup and a piece of white bread, and the smell alone made him feel nauseous. No going back now though. He ate slowly, and she stayed with him. It must have been the middle of the night, because the oil lamp on his bedside table was the only light in the tent, and all the other men seemed to be sleeping. And why was the girl staring at him like that?

“Tes yeux… uhm-”

“What?” he asked, sounding impatient. He didn’t intend to be rude, but he felt sick, tired, and a headache was creeping up the back of his skull. He could've used a cigarette too, but the way his hand trembled holding the spoon, he figured he'd spare himself the embarrassment. Yet, at least his hands finally had a reason to shake now.

“Your… eyes-”

“What about my eyes?” Again. He should just let her try and get the words out. She reminded him of Greta. Not concerning looks, but the shyness towards him; a stranger. Greta had always blushed so beautifully whenever he had only said as much as hello to her. Tommy put the spoon down in defeat. He had eaten about half the bowl and left the bread untouched, but that was enough already to make his tummy be mildly upset.

“They are… un bleu très spécial.” She grinned at him, taking the tray from his lap, and Tommy understood enough to feel a blush creeping onto his cheeks. Good thing it was pretty dark in the tent.

“Like the ocean at my hometown.” She wasn’t shy actually. Not even a bit like Greta. Tommy didn’t respond to her compliment, but signaled her to leave, when he slumped down farther in the bed, pretending to go to sleep.  
He dreamt of her, of Greta. He couldn't remember clearly anymore later. There was mud and blood and splintered wood in his dreams, and Greta was still dead. He woke up in sweat-soaked sheets, and his stomach promptly decided to empty itself. Tommy thought there should be dirt and mud and ash coming from inside of him, but it was mostly water and soup.  
Jeanne and another nurse were quickly by his side, man-handling him into a somewhat upright and definitely painful position, holding a bucket in front of him. Tommy felt more miserable than he ever had before. Between retches, having his mouth wiped with a wet cloth, his back stroked soothingly, or his fringe held back by small, warm hands, he thought that this was probably the payback for being so rude to Jeanne earlier. Once he was empty, he was shaking from exertion and pain, his vision had gone white, so close to passing out. The small, warm hands guided him back down on the bed, the soiled blankets were lifted, temporarily leaving him cold and shivering, before fresh ones were carefully draped over him again.

Tommy let sleep slowly engulf him with dark numbness, and while he did, he realized that he didn't feel lucky.  
He could be with Greta now. Why had he given her the ridiculous promise of staying alive?  
Now he had other women that didn't interest him wipe vomit from his mouth, patch up his wounds, swaddle him in blankets like a fucking child, and he could not do anything to stop them.  
He felt alone, and he wished he'd died with those 28 brave men, whom he saw as the lucky ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It hurts me to hurt Tommy, but I guess this is only the beginning of his war traumas.  
One down, many more to go...
> 
> [ “Hörst du das?” - "Can you hear that?"
> 
> “Jetzt nicht mehr. Aber da war irgendwas, oder irgendwer.” - "Now it's gone. But there was something, or someone."
> 
> “Wahrscheinlich die Nachtschicht. Komm jetzt. Du kennst den Befehl. Tunnel räumen, bevor hier alles in die Luft fliegt oder die da drüben gar noch vorher durchbrechen.” - "Probably the nightshift. Come on. You know the orders. Clear the tunnel before everything goes up in flames, or before those over there break through." ]
> 
> Would mean the world to me if you told me what you think so far!


	8. My whole heart burned but not buried this time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while... and I am sorry.
> 
> BUT I have managed to produce a new chapter at last!
> 
> This starts off in 1914 before the Shelbys even enlisted to fight and has some belated, much needed Christmas fluff for them in store too. As always, I am trying to stick as closely to historical facts as possible.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from "Which Witch" by Florence+the machine]

5TH AUGUST 1914 [BIRMINGHAM, SMALL HEATH]

The streets had looked at peace and beautiful in the warm, sunny morning glow of August, when John rushed into the house out of breath, waving the still wet newspaper into his family’s faces.

“We are at war! England fucking declared war on the Germans!”

Arthur almost lost control over his tilted back chair, having to grab for the edge of the table in order to stabilise himself. Ada looked up from her breakfast plate, and Polly appeared from the kitchen, where she had just tried to get news about Greta Jurossi’s condition out of an overly sleep-deprived Tommy and perhaps convince him to eat some breakfast too.

“We’re at war with Germany,” John repeated. “They decided to ignore the Treaty of London and took Belgium. The King’s asking men to enlist.”

Arthur muttered a quiet “Fuck”, Ada had forgotten about her toast and tea, and Polly covered her mouth with her hand. Tommy was the only one to not freeze where he stood, but crossed the room and snatched the paper from his brother’s hand.

“Some of our boys are up at Edgbaston smashing the windows of the house of the German consul. We probably should -” John’s voice died when Tommy glared at him.

“What the fuck are they doing that for?” he spit out and pushed the newspaper back into John’s hands before heading into the hallway, grabbing his coat and hat. “Arthur, John, open up the shop. I’ll deal with our boys. Ada, go to Charlie’s yard and ask him to get rid of all the boxes before the army comes knocking, asking for supplies and horses.”

“What boxes, Tommy?” Ada asked.

“He’ll know.” And with that he was out of the door.

“Bloody hell,” Polly cursed, grabbing her coat too and heading for the door. “Told him to find a safe place for the cigarettes and whiskey weeks ago. Ada, I’ll deal with Charlie. Arthur, John do as you’re told and open up the shop.”

“Since when am I following my kid brother’s orders now, eh?” Arthur growled.

“Since he is the one dealing with most of the trouble you don’t feel like handling, Arthur,” Polly bit back before the door fell closed behind her.

7TH AUGUST 1914 [BIRMINGHAM, SMALL HEATH]

A few days later the shop windows and walls were plastered with the King’s recruitment posters, and in every district there was a display of the men who had already enlisted. Allowed was every healthy man between the ages of 19 and 30. A large crowd was gathering on Coventry Road when Polly was on her way back home from the shops. The lists of men enlisted so far were like a magnet for old and young, male and female, and the people of all generations seemed collectively enthralled at the prospect of war. Who would’ve thought weeks ago that the assassination of the Austrian Archduke would cause all of Europe to go mad?

“Germany needs to be reminded they’re not superior, ignorant twats they are!”

“Show them how the English fight!”

Polly frowned but pushed through the crowd to have a look at the list of names herself. She didn’t know why but she felt a strange knot of worry deep in her stomach.  
Scanning the long lists, she read the names of many men belonging to families she knew. Mostly working men employed in the factories around Small Heath.  
She sighed when she came across Freddie Thorne’s name. Tommy’s best friend since school. May God be with him.  
A little further down the list, Polly couldn’t believe her eyes.  
She took a step back, then stepped closer again, traced her finger over the letters, reading the name for the fifth time, still not believing what she was seeing.

“The bloody idiot!” she whispered and turned on the back of her heel, hurrying through the mess of people.

-

“Where is he?”

“Who now, Aunt Pol?” John asked, not looking up from the money he was counting. “We’ve had a good week. People seem to be all cheerful about the news and we won’t mind as long as it makes them spend money on bets.” He finally looked up at his aunt, deciding she looked bloody angry. “If ye’re looking for Arthur, he’s in his office-”

In that moment, the door behind Polly opened again and Tommy stepped inside the shop. He opened his mouth and was about to say something when Polly’s hand connected hard with his cheek and his head flew to the side.

“Oh fuck,” John giggled in the background, and Tommy covered his left cheek with his own hand, frowning at his aunt.

“You fucking idiot,” Polly whispered, and John’s smile disappeared from his face when he saw that tears were in her eyes. “What the hell were you thinking?”  
Tommy’s face hardened and his hand dropped down at his side again. Of course Polly had been the one to find out first.  
The room was silent for an agonizingly long moment, until Arthur appeared from the back of the shop. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Tommy and Polly were locked in a seemingly never ending stare-off, and John forgot the sum of money he’d counted so far.  
Polly cleared her throat at last, swallowed down the tears and turned around to her other nephews. “Had a look at the lists down on Coventry Road when I came back from the shops. Guess whose bloody name I found on one of them?”  
Tommy rolled his eyes behind her and nervously shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He’d thought it would be a challenge to tell Greta, but this was worse actually.  
John’s mouth fell open, but Arthur looked questioningly from one face to the other; granted, he hadn’t witnessed his aunt slapping Tommy like in the good old times.

“Tom?” John asked with a shaky voice. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Fucking hell, Tommy!” Arthur yelled at the revelation and kicked against a nearby chair, making it fall over.

Tommy was fumbling for his cigarettes and matches to avoid eye-contact with his aunt or brothers. Once he had lit a cigarette, he looked up at them in this ever so unimpressed manner he had acquired lately.  
“My bloody decision to make, eh? Don’t need to ask any of you for permission.”

With that he turned around again, reaching for the door handle, but Polly’s firm grip on his upper arm stopped him.

“Oh no. If you think you can make decisions like a big man, then you will justify them like one too, Thomas.”

Her grip didn’t falter and Tommy felt himself being dragged over to the door connecting the betting shop with the house. Polly opened the door, revealing a big-eyed, guilty-looking 6 year old Finn standing behind it.  
Polly let go of Tommy’s arm and strode past her youngest nephew towards the kitchen, obviously expecting only Tommy to follow her.

-

“I wanna know why?”

Tommy shrugged and plopped down in a chair by the table.

“Thomas, I swear, I’ll beat the shit out of you if you don’t start talking,” Polly hissed and lit a cigarette for herself, leaning against the counter. “Fuck the King for making fucking children sign their names in those lists just because it makes them feel like men.”

“I am a fucking man, Pol. I’m 24, for fuck’s sake, would you stop treating me like I am a boy who got caught stealing sweets?” Tommy burst, connecting his flat palm with the table top, making the glass jars on it rattle.

“I’ll treat you like a man once you start behaving like one, Thomas.” Polly replied calmly, blowing out smoke from her mouth. “Does Greta know?”  
Tommy slowly inhaled air through his nose, making his nostrils flare.  
“No.”

“So Freddie Thorne and you suddenly felt like you owed this country and our King enough to sign your names away without telling your families first? Going off to kill Germans in his name as if it were playing Cowboys and Indians in the streets a few years ago, eh?” Polly continued.

“That was a long time ago, Pol,” Tommy sighed, his anger going up in steam. “We’re not kids anymore now.”

“But such a silly boy still, aren’t you?” Polly chuckled bitterly. “Been laughing at the men wasting their money on fixed races for years, yet you yourself are stupid enough to gamble with your own life.”

Tommy felt his forehead connect with the table surface. Why was this happening?  
He registered the chair beside his own being pulled out from under the table and Polly took a seat. A moment later he felt a hand on his back.

“I know she’s dying, love,” she said quietly, her anger gone too now. “I know it hurts, but it doesn’t mean your life is over as well. We need you too, Tom.”

Tears stung in his eyes, and when Polly pulled him into an embrace he didn’t fight her.  
“Just wish you’d still talk to me these days, love.” she whispered.

-

Three days later Greta Jurossi died at night in Tommy’s arms, and Arthur and John signed their names too, unwilling to let their brother go to France alone.  
Ada was mad at all of them, including Polly, who had apparently given up on trying to tell them they were idiots. She just hoped the predictions that the war would be won before Christmas were right.  
An average of 500 men enlisted daily in Birmingham alone, and still more and more young men pressured each other to enlist. Finn was throwing tantrums about not being old enough to do so too and sneaked into his brother Tommy’s room almost every night to sleep in his abandoned bed.  
On the 17th of August 1914 Polly, Ada and Finn all had tears in their eyes, as they hugged three uniform-clad, young men goodbye, watching them disappear in a sea of hundreds of doppelgangers, fearing they would never see them again.

1ST DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM; NEW STREET STATION]

Polly willed her knees to stop shaking, and grabbed Finn by the shoulder to keep him from running towards every khaki uniform he could spot in the crowd. Ada beside them was sighing every ten seconds and shifted from one leg to the other about twice as often.

This war was supposed to have ended one year ago around Christmas, yet it went on still. This year though, more soldiers were allowed to travel home for the holiday. Arthur had recovered enough to be sent home, and John had written he had permission to take a leave as well.  
“But will Tommy come home too?” had been Finn’s only inquiry for weeks, and Polly hated to not have an answer for him. He had never written, not once in one and a half years, but she knew he received her letters. She had stopped being angry about it a long time ago, but her worrying about him still grew with every single unanswered one.

“Pol! Polly! That’s John over there!” Ada yelled suddenly, leaving her spot beside her aunt and little brother, running towards where she had seen him.  
John’s face lit up as soon as he saw her, and he lifted his sister up and spun her around when she threw her arms around him.  
Close behind John a battered looking, but smiling Arthur appeared, leaning heavily on a crutch and almost losing his balance when Finn crashed into him seconds later.  
Polly didn’t even try to hold the tears back when she hugged both of them.

“Let’s get you home, boys,” she sniffed and wiped at her cheeks.  
Ada grabbed Arthur’s bag for him, and John put his arm around Finn’s shoulders.  
Finn did not move an inch though.

“Where’s Tommy?”

They all froze and turned around to him again.

“We have to wait for Tommy,” Finn declared crossing his arms over his chest.

Arthur limped over to his little brother and crouched down as best as he could in front of him.  
“Look Finn, Tom’s not… he can’t come, you know. We haven’t heard of him in a bit, and it seems he can’t be here for Christmas. I’m sure he is thinking of you really hard, Finn.”

Truth was John and Arthur had heard about the terrible incident at La Boiselle, involving the 179th Tunnelling Company, Tommy’s company. The tragedy had taken a lot of lives, and all they knew was Tommy thankfully couldn’t have been one of them because they would have heard by now. If he was hurt however, they didn’t know since informing family members of the death of a loved one was a priority, compared to telling them someone was injured.

7TH DECEMBER 1915 [ÉTAPLES; FIELD HOSPITAL]

One of those mornings in the field hospital, Tommy woke up, and Freddie was sitting by his bedside.

“Morning, Tom,” he tried with a tired half-smile, and Tommy felt a shiver creep down his back. Freddie looked broken, if not physically, but something, some spark was missing from his eyes. “How are ye?”

Tommy blinked against the urge to ask Freddie what was wrong with him. He knew what was wrong, and he knew he himself was just as fucked up. He also forgot about the question Freddie had asked him.

“The pretty nurse says you’re doing a lot better compared to the first two weeks,” Freddie smiled. “No feverish nightmares anymore?” Silence followed and Tommy was still staring at him. He didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure he was able to speak at all right then.

“They discharged me this morning. I’m… I’m fine, I guess. Danny’s still gonna be for a while, not sure about you. Heard some old bastard from the 179th say that a kicker doesn’t need his hands anyways, but…” Freddie trailed off, aware that Tommy was not following him.

“You’re f... I mean-” Tommy interrupted himself and shifted on the bed, trying to sit up a little further without rubbing his bruised hip against the mattress too much.

“We’re all fine, Tommy,” Freddie sighed, despite shaking his head. “That’s what we ought to tell ourselves, eh? We’re fine. Bunch of lucky bastards we are. The Germans had the same idea as us, but they were faster. Their blow detonated our charge too. That’s why everything fucking collapsed. Around thirty men still lie down there somewhere now. The boys are not even allowed to dig for their bodies. Just us three… we’re fine.”  
He wiped at his eyes, jaws set tightly. “I know though, Tom, I know.”

Tommy watched him for a bit. He was scared Freddie would cry. He was scared he’d have to cry too then. He didn’t want to ever leave this tent again, nor did he want Freddie to leave; to be forced to leave. Go back to the fields, back down into the tunnels. His left hand throbbed painfully beneath the bandage.

“Tommy, are you-”

“I need a piss.”  
He had had to interrupt Freddie; keep him from asking whatever he was going to ask. Tommy Shelby would not cry here on this day. He was a man, and men didn’t cry; soldiers even less. Freddie stared at him dumbfoundedly.

“Are you gonna help me up now or not?” he snapped at him, getting rid of the blankets covering him. Freddie rose from his chair and let Tommy drape his right arm over his shoulder, snaking his own around his friend’s narrow waist and helped him stand. It was too easy. Tommy had to eat better in the future and Freddie would make sure of that. He could’ve lifted him completely from the bed probably. The man weighed about as much as a kitten, even though he leaned heavily on Freddie when he helped him limp down to the lavatories.

-

The following morning, a much happier Freddie was back with a letter. A letter for Tommy.

“They’re sending more lads home for Christmas this year,” he started. “Soldiers that are hurt but well enough to get on a train get a preference over others. Greetings from Captain Hance, Tommy.” Freddie wiggled the letter in front of his friend’s face. “Your brothers have been home for a week already, and this morning he signed a permission for you too.”

“I won’t go home,” Tommy said a little too quickly, and Freddie tilted his head with a knowing smile. “I can’t, Freddie.”  
“More like you’re scared you can’t wrap your head around coming back again, Tom, aye?” he smiled. “Go home and see your people, have a proper Christmas and forget about all this shit for a while, yeah? You gotta come back for me and Danny anyways,” he chuckled.  
Freddie looked a lot better than the previous day. Somehow the knowledge that Tommy got to be in Birmingham with his family for Christmas made himself feel all warm and happy too.  
“I wrote to your sister, telling her she has to pick up something from the station for me on December 10th. You will get on the train to Calais tomorrow morning, Tom, and I will personally make sure you do, even if I have to kick your scrawny ass all the way to the station!”

-

Freddie indeed did make sure Tommy was one of the soldiers on the train headed for Calais the following morning, and after having been shipped to the docks of Dover, another train took them to London, where Tommy and most of the other returning soldiers had to undergo a medical check-up and a sleepless night.

On the morning of the 10th of December, Tommy boarded a train bound for Birmingham and spent the duration of the journey with his forehead pressed against the cold glass window of the compartment he was in, trying to figure out an explanation for why he hadn’t written even a single letter to Polly or Ada or Finn in all this time. He still hadn’t come up with anything when the train arrived in New Street Station.

10TH DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM; NEW STREET STATION]

Ada wasn’t sure why Freddie had sent her to pick something up at the station that Friday morning. It wasn’t her birthday any time soon, and no one knew about her and Freddie liking each other anyways, so what in the world could he want her to pick up for him?  
She expected a present, maybe he had seen something in France that had reminded him of her.  
Ada couldn’t help but smile when she thought about the letter he had sent in response to the hat and scarf she had secretly sent him last Christmas.  
She was just in time for the 12 o’clock train and decided to wait at the special post office inside the station to be the first one to check for any new mail arriving from Freddie.  
From her spot she observed civilians helping bruised and battered looking soldiers with their bags, mothers embracing their sons in tears, lovers crashing their lips together, brothers and sisters reuniting.  
The crowd started to dissolve slowly, when Ada felt a pang in her chest at catching a glimpse of the back of a dark haired soldier who looked a little like Tommy.  
When he turned around, she felt a strangled gasp escape her mouth.

She left her spot, manoeuvring her way through the maze of departing families, lost sight of him once, and found him again, so much closer now.  
He was trying to shoulder his heavy bag properly, which looked like quite a challenge considering his left arm was stuck in a sling and useless to the task.

Ada mouthed a quiet “Tommy” that he couldn’t have heard, but suddenly he looked up, and she could tell he had somehow spotted her immediately.  
That’s when Ada decided to hell with manners and bolted for him, bumping into people left and right.  
By the time she reached him tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Tommy had dropped his bag all together again.

She probably made him hurt like hell the way she crashed into him, wrapping her arms around him and crying into his neck, but he hugged her back as best as he could with his good arm, and when she lifted her head to look at him properly, tears were silently making their way down his cheeks too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You’re home,” Ada answered, a smile lit up her whole face and she pressed a kiss into his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Would make my day if you told me what you think!!!


	9. I know a cold as cold as it gets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The continuation of the united Shelby Christmas of 1915 is here!
> 
> Finn loves Tommy about as much as I do. Just to warn ya!
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Patty Griffin "As cold as it gets"]

Even though Tommy protested at first, Ada ended up carrying his bag for him, her other arm linked through his right.  
“I work at the BSA now, Tom. I have lifted stuff heavier than this bag!”  
It was also obvious to Ada, he wasn’t very steady on his feet yet.

The streets outside the station were busy and looked festive, warm light streaming out of colourful shop windows and people carrying bags presumably full of Christmas shopping.  
Everything was loud and bright and cheerful, and Tommy was on the verge of a headache after 5 minutes of it, glad that his sister was so close by and leading him through the confusing chaos of people.  
When they finally turned into Watery Lane the sky started sputtering thick snowflakes down onto the earth and Tommy shivered in his uniform. For the first time, he felt a little bit thankful for not having to spend some of the coldest weeks of the year in some freezing, makeshift bed in France.

“Let’s hope Polly has lunch ready! You look hungry,” Ada smiled, tugging her brother impossibly closer, noticing his blue lips and the goosebumps covering his neck. She’d get him a scarf and hat for Christmas too. He and Freddie would end up with matching ones.  
“You’ll be the best early Christmas present, Tommy. Finn is not gonna believe his eyes!”

Tommy resisted the urge to tell her he was not hungry at all, but the thought of his family bustling around him and hugging and kissing him made him feel rather nauseous with guilt and shame and some other indefinable feelings.

“Alright,” Ada started when they reached the door to the Shelby home. “We gotta do this right, Tom.”

She carefully unlocked the door and tiptoed into the hallway, motioning him to stay put, before waving him in.  
“Shhhhh,” she hissed, pulling Tommy inside by his sleeve and dropped his bag by the coathangers. “Polly’s in the kitchen. We’re gonna surprise her first!”

Tommy managed a smile at his sister’s excited face and trotted along obediently behind her. When Ada stepped into the kitchen, he waited outside.

“Oh Ada, good. You can help me set the table. Almost ready for lunch,” Polly instructed once she sensed her niece’s presence.  
Yet Ada stepped behind her aunt and covered her eyes with her hands.  
“What is that about now, Ada?” Polly laughed, putting the knife down.

“Turn around, Polly,” Ada smiled. “Got an early Christmas present for ya!”  
She made Polly turn around and take two steps forward, until she stood about an arm’s length away from Tommy, who’d silently entered the kitchen.  
Ada noticed he’d gone white as a wall, awkwardly standing in his own home like he were a stranger, and was obviously expecting a negative reaction. She shook her head at him with a smile and took her hands from Polly’s eyes.  
“You can look now!”

Polly opened her eyes and a high-pitched “Oh God!” escaped her mouth before she could cover it with her hand. Then she just stood still for a moment, silently crying.

“Merry Christmas, Aunt Pol,” Tommy mumbled in order to break the silence, and next thing he knew he was wrapped in another, slightly more careful embrace. He squeezed his eyes shut; the spurt of tears that had overcome him at the train station was enough for one day, but the familiar way Polly’s hand cradled the back of his head made him almost tear up again.  
When she let go of him, there was no hint of blame or anger in her eyes, just pure surprise and happiness, and Tommy’s heartbeat slowed down at this reassurance.

“Oh poor boy, what happened to you,” she said, stepping back a little to take in his battered appearance. “And we thought Arthur looked like a beaten up puppy.”

“‘m fine,” Tommy mumbled, his ears hot from a crimson blush. “How’s Arthur?”

“Getting better every day,” Polly answered quickly. “I’ll pep up all three of ya while you’re here.” She gently squeezed Tommy’s shoulder. “Lunch is ready. You go upstairs and get Finn, Tommy. You won’t believe how much he’s grown!”

-

Tommy stood outside his little brother’s door for a while, unable to get his hand to knock. When he finally mustered up the strength to go through with it, there was no answer. The room was empty.  
Having read all of Polly and Ada’s letters more than once, Tommy did have a vague idea of where Finn could be though.

It felt strange ascending the stairs and walking across the short landing towards his own bedroom door. He hadn’t been here for so long, and still everything was exactly the same. The creaky floorboard, the shaky bannister.  
It didn’t take him long to knock this time, and at Finn’s dreamy “I’ll be downstairs in a minute!” he felt a smile tug at his lips.

He entered the room, finding his kid brother on the floor in front of his drawer, going through the small collection of photographs stored there. Tommy stayed in the door frame for a bit, watching his little brother silently. He seemed entirely lost in the moments the photographs had captured. Two pictures of their parent’s wedding, one of Arthur, Tommy, and John holding their new baby sister, one of when Finn had been baptised; Tommy knew all of them by heart too. The newest addition to the stack was the one Finn was currently staring at: Arthur, John, and Tommy in their uniforms before they had gone to France.

“I said I’ll be downstairs in a-” Finn turned around and his eyes went wide.

“It’s been a little more than a minute, little brother,” Tommy smiled, and Finn scrambled to his feet as fast as he could.

“Tommy!”

Polly had been right; Finn had grown a lot since he’d last seen him. He was reaching far above Tommy’s elbows by now.

“How-” Finn started, grasping Tommy’s sleeve so tightly he might’ve feared his brother was going to vanish into thin air in front of him again. “But… But they all said you- They said you wouldn’t come! Arthur said you can’t be here for Christmas! Do you have to leave again?”

“Calm down, Finn,” Tommy laughed, actually laughed; a sound and feeling that had become very unfamiliar to himself.

“Will you be here for Christmas?” Finn almost cried out, still not letting go of Tommy’s shirt.  
“Yes, Finn,” Tommy smiled, ruffling his brother’s hair after finally freeing his right arm from the 7 year-old’s iron grip. “I’ll be here.”

-

Tommy descended the stairs with Finn glued to his hip, unwilling to let go of the one brother he had obviously believed lost. Tommy didn’t have the heart to tell Finn how much his hip hurt in that tight embrace.

“Must’ve miscounted,” they heard Polly from downstairs.

“Force of habit, aye Pol? Probably ‘ave been setting the table for six people all this time we were away?” Arthur joked before he was boxed in the shoulder roughly by John beside him, who sat facing the stairs.

“Fuckin’-” Arthur started but couldn’t finish before he saw them too. “- hell!”

“Language, Arthur,” Polly smiled.

“Tommy boy!” John cheered and was up in no time, wrapping Tommy in the fourth, painful hug of the day.

-

They ate, and the rest of the day was spent talking and catching up on all the stuff that had happened in the 16 months the brothers had been gone.  
Tommy was relieved at least John seemed to not be bothered to talk about France, while Arthur became suspiciously quiet as well, when Finn or Ada asked questions about the fighting.

“Let’s not talk too much of war while you’re here, boys,” Polly interrupted Finn’s next question, observing all too well Arthur and Tommy seemed more and more quiet, stuck in nightmarish memories.  
“We should catch some sleep. All of us.” she glared at Finn, who was already up and trying to drag Tommy up with him too.  
“Say goodnight to your brothers, Finn,” Ada smiled, getting up and taking the boy’s hand. Finn pouted, yet wished them a good night anyways, but when Ada had already led him to the stairs, he darted for Tommy once more after all.

“I missed you so much,” he whispered into his brother’s chest, letting go only after Polly had grabbed him by the shoulders. John got up too and accompanied Ada and Finn upstairs.  
Arthur, Polly, and Tommy remained in the kitchen.

“I think I’ll… “ Tommy started, that awkward feeling from earlier returning somewhere deep in his stomach. “I’ll go to bed too.”

“Your bandages need to be changed, love,” Polly stated matter-of-factly, carrying the last few glasses and plates into the kitchen. “Yours too, Arthur,” she reminded him from the kitchen.

“What happened, Tom?” Arthur suddenly asked, without looking at his younger brother. “We heard about the disaster at La Boiselle. Heard that the whole fucking system of tunnels collapsed. They said no one could have gotten out of there. Fucking hell, Tommy, we thought you might be dead.”

Tommy answered him with stubborn silence.

“You know, Polly and Ada might not be mad at you for not even writing a single letter, but I am. Is it that bloody hard to pick up a piece of paper and a fucking pen to write a few reassuring words back to them? John sent a letter back every time, I sent a letter back whenever I could from fucking Gallipoli, even if I didn’t know if they’d be delivered. But the ever so fucking smart brother, the one who always stole my notebooks before he even was in school himself to draw or write in them couldn’t manage to send back one shitty letter letting his family know that he is alright?”

Polly had been gone suspiciously long, and was probably avoiding the room and this conversation. Tommy needed a cigarette so bad. They were in his coat pocket and he had left it upstairs in his room when getting Finn.

“And you’re not left-handed, so that’s no excuse either,” Arthur snorted. “Even if you were, could’ve made some other man write something for you. I wrote two letters for a fucking kid, who had both of his arms blown off by a landmine, Tommy. Two fucking letters I wrote for that boy, to his mother in some village in Scotland. He had asked me to help him write a third one, but you see, he fucking died the following night.”

Tommy looked at Arthur, who had tears in his eyes, but returned his gaze.

“Hope that kid’s mother was lucky enough to decipher your dreadful scrawl,” he said calmly, raising his eyebrow at seeing Arthur’s hands ball into fists. Tommy got up and headed for the stairs, ignoring the sharp “Fuck you” Arthur sent after him.

-

Tommy had some time to himself, smoked one cigarette out the window and watched the snow coat the streets, before it got too cold in the room and he had to close it. He smoked another two sitting on his bed, until a gentle knock on his door put an end to his pondering and subsequently his smoking.

“You still awake, Tom?” Polly asked from behind the door, and Tommy put out his cigarette on the ashtray beside his bed before getting up to let her in. Except Finn everyone had developed some sort of healthy restraint when it came to just bursting into his bedroom like they would into anyone else’s. There had been an incident involving Greta a few years back, and Tommy might’ve overreacted, but at least people in this family had learned to knock and wait for the answer too.

“I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t necessary, love,” Polly said, stepping into his room, carrying fresh bandages and a bottle of rum.

“It’s alright,” Tommy answered half-heartedly, sitting down on his bed again. He had gotten rid of the sling already but wasn’t sure how to tackle the task of wriggling out of his shirt. With Polly’s help he was out of it frighteningly fast.  
Her eyes narrowed slightly when she saw the cuts and bruises littering his chest but she didn’t say anything. She let her fingers trail gently across his healing collarbone, apparently deciding it was alright enough, and started unwrapping the bandage on his left arm.  
The smaller cuts had healed nicely by now but from the elbow down his arm was still a colourful mess of bruises ranging from deep purple to sickly yellow. Tommy suspected that during the first blow of the explosion some heavy object, most likely a wooden beam, must’ve collided with his forearm and shoulder when he brought the arm up to shield his face. He couldn’t remember anything clearly though.

“Is it broken?” Polly asked, stopping to unwrap the bandage further and trailing her fingers along the deep purple part of the bruise close to Tommy’s wrist.  
“Dunno,” Tommy answered truthfully. “The X-ray machine in Étaples has been broken for w-” He had to clench his jaws when Polly probed the most sore part of his arm by pressing down with her thumb and pointer finger. “-for weeks. It’s fine, Pol. I’ll keep it in the sling like the doctors said. It’ll be fine in a week or two.”  
Polly looked at him with lacking enthusiasm but let it be for now, commencing to unwrap the rest of the bandage.  
The wound from the splinter that had pierced his hand had still not closed properly, and Polly, who had managed to keep a mostly neutral face until now, scrunched her nose up, when she had to pull the last bit of cloth that stuck to the pussy wound off.  
Tommy tried to suppress the pained noise threatening to escape his mouth but failed.

“Good Lord, Tommy,” she sighed, reaching for the bottle of rum and drenching a clean cloth with its content. “The bandage was too tight. It’s on the verge of going bad. We’ll need to change it twice daily for a while, or it’ll get worse.”

Tommy hissed when the alcohol licked into the open wound, but the familiar ritual of having his minor (or major) injuries treated by his aunt felt almost comforting. Almost.

“You smell of soap,” Polly remarked while gently wrapping Tommy’s hand and arm in a fresh bandage. In a looser way this time. “Did they wash all the dirt of France off of you homecoming boys in London last night?”  
Tommy managed a nod.  
He still felt dirty, crusted over with mud, and blood, and wooden splinters stuck in his clothes and hair and -  
He was home.  
He was alive.  
He was objectively clean. Smelling of that intensive soap he only ever knew from hospitals, but underneath-  
Polly’s hand on his cheek brought him back.

“Chavaia, Tommy… It’s alright, love,” she whispered and stroked her thumb across his cheekbone. Polly had rarely used Romani in years, and Tommy only now realised he had started sucking in air in panicked gasps. She had really only ever used it to tell them to behave when they’d been kids, or used it in fragile moments like this one. The result was that whenever Polly used any Romani, it comforted in an authoritative kind of manner; if she told you to stop and calm down, you obeyed.  
He concentrated his eyes on the wallpaper’s pattern and willed his breathing to ease again. He didn’t want his aunt to see him like this. The scared boy, who had had nightmares whenever his father decided to live at home.  
He wasn’t that boy anymore.  
“Is there anything else I need to take a look at?” Polly asked, dropping her hand from his face.  
Tommy shook his head. His hip was throbbing with pain but he just needed to be alone and it would probably get better once he lay down.  
“Are you sure?” Polly asked suspiciously. He nodded. “Alright then… try and catch some sleep.”  
Polly rose to her feet, remaining stood right in front of her nephew’s crouched form on the bed. She sighed, gathered her supplies and headed for the door.

“I didn’t want to come home.”

Polly turned around again at his words, her expression unreadable.

“Night, Tom,” she said after a moment of loaded silence and slipped out of his room, pulling the door closed behind her.  
Tommy didn’t know what he had wanted to hear from her.

11TH DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM, SMALL HEATH]

He woke up in the middle of the night, unable to remember the nightmare that had roused him from his sleep, and at a complete loss of orientation in his dark room. The half drawn lace curtains cast ghostly shadows across the floor and the sweat on Tommy’s back turned ice cold in a matter of seconds after he had sat upright in bed.  
His own bedroom, Birmingham, Small Heath. Watery Lane.  
He was home.  
He was still home.  
Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his good hand, Tommy lay back down slowly, pulling the damp blanket up around his shivering body. He hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt after Polly had had a look at his injuries and regretted it now.

After what seemed like hours, he admitted defeat. He couldn’t fall back asleep and neither did his body warm up anymore. Getting up, pins and needles shot up from the foot of his right leg, up all the way into his hip. He had to stand still for a moment, his leg going from the sleepy, tickling sensation to complete numbness, to finally just utterly painful under the pressure of his body’s weight.  
He hobbled over to his old drawers, once he could properly feel the sole of his naked foot on the wooden ground again. The movement eased the pain. He made a mental note not to sleep curled up on his side anymore until his hip was healed.  
The white undershirt was the cleanest item of clothing Tommy had worn in more than a year and its fabric felt soft and gentle on his irritated skin.  
He pulled his suspenders back up, having fallen asleep in his uniform trousers, and found one of his peaked caps in another drawer. With the cap and his cigarettes Tommy quietly made his way down to the kitchen, picking up an apple from the fruit bowl. It was 3 o’clock in the morning and the house was deadly silent.  
From the wardrobe by the door, Tommy retrieved an old, thick, woolen coat and pulled it over his good arm, only now realising he had forgotten his sling upstairs. Muttering a silent curse, he pushed his bandaged arm through the other sleeve, biting his bottom lip against the pain. He slipped into his boots barefooted, because sock were not really a priority and damn hard to pull on one-handed too.

He stepped outside into the ice cold December night, pulling the front door closed behind him without making a noise. He didn’t have keys but wasn’t planning to return before morning anyways.  
It had stopped snowing and instead an icy breeze swept through the streets, making Tommy pull his cap down lower into his forehead, before crossing his arms in front of his body, his right supporting his left, which definitely started to feel like it should be in that damned sling.  
He wondered if it was cold in France too right now. Wondered, if Freddie was stuck in a damp tunnel deep below the frozen ground of the Somme. He should go and see Freddie’s mother, tell her that her son was… alright.  
Because what else could he tell her?

His steps carried him to Charlie’s Yard and into the stables. Most of the horses had been collected in the first few days of war the previous year, but two old mares had been spared. One of them was the white pony his mother had given him when he was a boy.

“Sashin, Pawney?” Tommy whispered upon stepping into the horse’s box. The white horse immediately rubbed her nose against his coat pocket, where he had hidden the apple. He brought his hand up to caress her soft nose, before retrieving the apple from his pocket and offering it to her.  
After she had munched away on the apple, the pony nudged her nose against Tommy’s bandaged hand, as if to ask what had happened to him.

“Mandi kushti,” Tommy whispered, burying his good hand in her thick, white fur. He still recalled the day his mother had lifted him up on her back for the first time, telling him it was his now. She told him to give her a name, and he had needed about half a second to come to a decision.  
Pawney.  
Meaning ‘white’ in Romani but sounding almost like ‘pony’ in English.  
He was glad they had had no use for her in the war. She had seen her share of street wars anyways, fought by his brothers and their friends. Freddie had been scared of Pawney, never even once sat on her back. Greta on the other hand had loved her, had always brought a carrot or an apple for her. Something in his chest clenched, thinking back to those days, free of worries, just kids pretending to own the world.  
It doesn’t do to dwell on the past. That was perhaps the only useful thing his father had ever told him. Tommy was five, and his grandmother had died, his dad’s mother. Tommy had not understood how he wasn’t sad. Now he wished he possessed his father’s indifference.  
It would make everything in life so much easier.

-

Polly had always cherished the early hours of the morning, just before sunrise. Especially, if she got to spend them alone in the kitchen with a cup of tea and the newspaper.  
Her peace was disturbed when Finn came crashing down the stairs.

“He’s gone! Where is he, Aunt Pol?”

Polly sighed and put the paper down but took her time to down the last sip of tea from her cup, while Finn was already standing right in front of her, hair mussed from sleep and eyes threatening to spill tears.

“Tommy’s not in his room.”

Polly got up to put the kettle back on and because she was lacking an explanation too. She had come downstairs at 6, so Tommy must’ve slipped out before that.

“I… I didn’t make him up, did I?” Finn asked quietly from behind her. “I didn’t dream he came back.”

Polly sighed again. She’d have to talk to Tommy. Slipping out in the middle of the night again like when he was a boy. She only wasn’t worried about him because it was such a natural thing to happen with Tommy.

“You didn’t dream him up, Finn,” she answered. “He’s probably gone for a walk or to the stables. God knows where your brother goes in the middle of the night.”

“Are you mad at him?” Finn asked cautiously. Polly gave it a thought.

“Nah, I’m not mad, Finn. Your brother need some time to get used to being back home. All three of them do, you understand?”

A knock on the door stopped the young boy from answering. He ran over to open it.

“Tommy!” he squealed overjoyed at the sight of his brother and pulled him inside. “Where were you? I’ve been looking for you in your room, but-”

“Finn.” Polly’s voice lectured him from the kitchen. She was pouring hot water in the teapot and had three cups, a bottle of rum and fresh gauze all ready on the table when Finn and Tommy stepped into the kitchen. “I see, you’re dutifully wearing your sling like the doctors told you to, Tommy,” Polly remarked sarcastically. Tommy thought it best to not answer at all. “Let’s get your bandage changed and have breakfast afterwards,” she sighed. Men were never easy, but her sister-in-law had birthed some especially difficult ones.

14TH DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM, BORDESLEY GREEN]

Tommy had knocked about three times already, growing more and more impatient. He’d give it one more try, then he’d leave. Just as he raised his arm, the door opened a slit after all.  
“Yes?” a woman’s voice asked.  
“I am looking for Misses Thorne,” Tommy said. “I am a friend of her son,” he added when there was no reply.  
The door opened a little more at that, and Tommy could make out the features of a middle-aged woman.  
“I am just here to-”  
“She passed on, dear. Fever took her. It happened three days ago. I wrote to her son. Freddie, isn’t it?”

Tommy was unable to speak, standing in front of the woman, whose eyes had grown kind.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she continued. “It is very kind of you to come and ask after her on your friend’s behalf.”

Tommy just turned around and left. He couldn’t get a word out. Irene had always been kind to him. The first shoes he’d ever had were an old pair that Freddie had grown out of. She had asked him when his birthday was once, and every following year, she gave him a handful of sweets that day.  
She had been one of the kindest people Tommy had ever known, and he just wanted to be with Freddie now. Freddie had been there when his own mum had…

Three days ago.  
He could’ve still seen her, talked to her. He should’ve come here on his first day back home. She would’ve deserved to at least have Tommy visit her, if her own son couldn’t be here.

Passing through Watery Lane, Tommy decided he couldn’t go back home yet. It was cold, and he shivered even in his thick coat, but he needed to walk.  
He strolled to their old school, smoking cigarettes outside the gate, until the bell rang and pupils started to pour from the classrooms, heading home.  
Finn spotted him and ran over, obviously proud his brother was picking him up. He talked all the way back home, and Tommy was glad he did. It distracted him.

When they were about 20 feet from their doorstep, a snowball came out of nowhere and hit Tommy in the back of his head. He froze for a moment, head slightly ducked, snow already melting and sending ice cold streams down his collar. Finn beside him was giggling, grabbing some snow himself and forming a ball.  
Tommy turned around just in time to see the second snowball flying towards him. He could step out of the way just in time, glaring at John, who was having trouble trying not to fall over laughing and forming a new ball at the same time.

“Your turn, Tommy,” Finn tucked on his sleeve, grinning ear to ear and offering Tommy an expertly formed snowball. Another one of John’s snowballs hit its goal, bouncing off Tommy’s tigh.

“Childish bastard you are, John,” Tommy let his brother know, but took Finn’s offered snowball anyways. John was hit right in the chest a second later and Finn cheered.

“But you’re talking, Tom, eh?” John giggled, already producing more snowballs.

Arthur surfaced on the doorstep, leaning on his crutch, a smile playing around his lips at seeing his brothers playing in the snow as if Finn wasn’t the only seven year-old. Ada came outside a moment later as well, running over to John to make the battle a little more fair.

“It’s not fair!” Finn yelled at her, breathing heavily. “Tommy can’t make his own snowballs!”

Ada’s first snowball was aimed at Tommy, but he stepped aside and it hit Finn in the forehead, as he was crouching down to gather up some snow.

“OU!” he yelled, and his siblings all stopped dead in their tracks for a moment. Tommy crouched down to him, but Finn wasn’t going to cry. He was not going to cry in front of his brothers. “I’m fine,” he whispered to Tommy. “Give me cover.”  
He had another snowball ready, and just as Ada was approaching to see if he was hurt, he jumped up from behind Tommy, hitting her in the shoulder.

“Yes, Finn! Woohoo!” John cheered, a smile lighting up his whole face again.

“John, I am on your team,” Ada reminded him, but she was laughing too. Tommy felt himself smiling as well, and when he looked over to Arthur, his older brother was smiling at him and gave him a small nod. They should probably still talk about their fight a few nights ago, but this was something.  
Their snow ball fight continued for a while, John forming ridiculously big snowballs, Ada growing tired and suggesting they use them to build a snowman instead, while the sinking sun made the air grow colder.  
Polly appeared on the doorstep after a while, telling them to come inside, just as Finn was sprinting towards Tommy for cover. He wanted to stop when he heard his aunt, but the ground had frozen over again, and he slipped, falling forward and taking his unprepared brother down with him.

Tommy felt his wrist snap. Out of instinct he had used both his arms to break his and Finn’s fall. And the bone in his already battered arm gave way. It must’ve shown on his face for a moment, because Finn looked like he was going to start crying after all.

“We’re coming, Pol,” Tommy replied quickly, getting up, schooling his features and helping Finn up too.  
Polly eyed him questioningly when he stepped through the door, but Tommy had decided he could manage to postpone this until Finn was in bed at least. His fingers were going numb already anyways.

-

The knock on his bedroom door came late that night, and Tommy had almost fallen into an uncomfortable slumber by then. Like every night, Polly first took care of Arthur’s wounds, before seeing to Tommy’s.

“Tired, love?” she asked, approaching him. “You should try and stay in bed a full night for a change.”

Tommy said nothing and let her help him out of his shirt. His wrist had swollen so much over the past few hours, Polly could barely open the cuff.

“Managed to break it properly after all now, eh Tom?” she scolded him, pulling hard on the sleeve. Tommy cried out, but Polly finally threw his shirt on the bed beside him. “What did I tell you about wearing that goddamn sling?”  
She handed him the bottle of rum that was usually reserved for disinfecting the wound in his hand, and Tommy took a big gulp.  
Then, she pulled a chair up beside his bed, taking his arm in her lap, unwrapping the bandages more carefully than usually. “Try to move your fingers.”  
Tommy was able to wiggle his fingers a little; not much, but at least there was no severe nerve damage. He looked awfully pale and young sat in front of her like that.  
Polly gently felt for any sharp edges around the fracture but thankfully couldn’t find any, her fingers cool against the hot swelling.  
“We’ll splint it for the night, but a doctor will need to have a look at it, Tom. I still think you had a minor fracture already but now it is definitely broken all the way and displaced.”

By the time she had finished, Tommy was dizzy and too tired to try to hide it. Polly pulled the sling over his head again, securing his pounding arm against his chest, and gave him a gentle nudge against the shoulder, motioning him to lay down.  
“We’ve got enough ampoules of morphium downstairs… They gave Arthur plenty before sending him home. I can get you-”  
“No,” Tommy interrupted her. “I’ll be okay now.”  
Polly nodded and reached her hand out to stroke his dark fringe out of his eyes. He kept his eyes closed, and she got up, wishing him a good night.

“Freddie’s mum died. Three days ago,” Tommy spoke into the darkness of his room, just when Polly was pulling the door closed.

She stepped back into the room but remained by the door. “May God bless her soul… Poor Freddie. Does he know yet, Tommy?”

“I don’t know…” Tommy answered truthfully.

“We will buy some flowers to put on her grave. You can go to the burial. Maybe they’ll let Freddie come home for the burial?” Polly suggested, but Tommy knew better.

“They don’t send men home for people that are dead already, Pol,” he whispered.

“... you should sleep now, love,” Polly reminded him gently and Tommy nodded.

“Pol?” he stopped her once more. “Thanks.”

25TH DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM, SMALL HEATH]

The days leading up to Christmas were spent drinking lots of tea together, staying warm, avoiding the topic of the ongoing war, attending a funeral, and buying and wrapping presents. Polly had also dragged Tommy to a doctor a few days after the snow ball fight incident, with only mild complaining coming from his side by then because he couldn't think straight anymore due to the pain in his arm, and he had got the fracture set and splinted.  
As a kind of guilty thank you, and simply because his pay as a tunneller was considerably higher than his brothers', he had given both Polly and Ada 2 pound each so they could fulfill some last minute wishes. Mostly Finn’s wishes.  
On Christmas Eve, they ate dinner together first and helped Finn hang his stocking by the fireplace after. Polly insisted they hang a stocking for all the Shelby children, and even though Arthur snorted a laugh when he hung his own stocking, and Tommy’s ears and cheeks turned red from a blush, they didn’t refuse.

The next morning, Finn was able to harvest more presents than he’d ever been given before from his stocking, and the brothers had gotten Ada a bracelet. A real one, with real stones.

“They’re not diamonds, Ada, but you should still be careful with it,” Polly remarked with a laugh, when Ada’s shaky hands right away dropped it after taking it out of its box.  
Ada had gotten Tommy a deep blue scarf and a matching hat, as planned, and since his defence was still one armed, she managed to pull the hat over his head to see if it fit too.

“They had a lighter blue in the shop as well. Would’ve fit your eyes, brother, but Polly said dark colours would be better?”, Ada grinned and pulled the woolen fabric down over Tommy’s eyes, who responded with an annoyed huff.  
“To keep the smartest head warm,” Arthur remarked mockingly from the corner, and Tommy resurfaced from under the hat, glaring at him. They had talked, him and Arthur. Tommy might’ve even admitted to some mistakes from his side, for the sake of a peaceful Christmas, and they were alright now.

After everyone had unwrapped their presents and they had eaten, the brothers found themselves alone in the living room, while Ada and Polly did the dishes.  
Tommy and Arthur sat on the sofa, John had accompanied Finn on the floor in front of it.

“You remember Christmas last year, boys?” Arthur asked, a faraway look on his face. Tommy beside him nodded and John made a sound of agreement too.

25TH DECEMBER 1914 [BELGIUM, FLANDERS]

The ceasefire had already lasted a whole day and a night, and this morning, the officers had started handing out Christmas presents to the men. Every single soldier received a small tin box containing two packs of cigarettes from Princess Mary.  
Tommy had been smoking ever since.

“When do you think they’ll break the truce?” John asked, chewing on some bread and beef. “For how long will the Germans stick to their ‘We no shoot, you no shoot’ promise?”

“Dunno,” Arthur answered with a full mouth. “Some men say they’ve been up there. Walked into no-man’s-land just like that. Not being fired at.”

“They say the Germans are celebrating too. Singing songs even,” John continued, and suddenly he got up. “Fuck it. I wanna hear some Germans sing.”  
He approached the nearest ladder, but had both of his brothers grab him by his uniform.

“You stay here!” Arthur yelled.

“You mad, eh John?” Tommy hissed at him, his blue eyes as clear as the ice cold morning sky.

“Come on,” John begged them, the grin never leaving his face. “Cowards!”

After another hour of waiting, and more smoking on Tommy’s side, he was so bored, he kind of wanted to give in and go up there with John after all.  
It took some convincing to get Arthur to come, but soon after, the three brothers slowly climbed up the ladder, staying low above the ground at first, not entirely sure the enemy would just let them pass like that.  
But nothing happened.  
After about three minutes of robbing on the frozen ground, John got tired of it and stood up, his brothers following. They saw more and more men from their division also wandering into the vast, other-worldly stretch of land between the trenches.

Not long until they could see German uniforms in the distance, collecting bodies like their own comrades did further up north, and some of them seemed to have one hell of a good time. When the brothers came closer, they observed that it had to do with a football bouncing off the frozen ground.

“Oi,” John called, and about 10 German heads turned to look at them. “Football?”

The Germans nodded with grins on their faces. “Fußball.”

Other British soldiers had come after the Shelby brothers, and John turned around to have a quick count. One of the Germans, a tall, slender, dark haired man in John’s age, had approached him, politely waiting until John focused on him again.

“You want to play?” he asked in a thick accent, and John and him already knew they’d like each other.

Two teams were formed, John and the German, whose name coincidentally was Johann, had picked their players, and the game had been going on for a while. Left and right other soldiers from both sides were cheering.  
The game ended 3 - 2 for the Germans, but no one really cared, and they stayed together for the rest of the day, men sharing food, cigarettes, chocolate and singing songs.

25TH DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM, SMALL HEATH]

“I wonder if they’re all alive still. The boys from the match,” John whispered, quickly getting himself together, when he remembered Finn was listening. “Bet the tall guy, Johann, he’s home too now. In the mountains, where he said the snow never melts until June.”

Tommy and Arthur nodded. They’d never know.

“I don’t want you to leave again,” Finn said quietly, and the brothers all got very quiet until Ada and Polly were back and got them thinking about other things. For a few more days at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Chavaia" - "Stop"  
"Sashin?" - "How are you?"  
"Mandi kushti" - "I'm fine"
> 
> I hope you liked this chapter, and are ready nevertheless for the brothers going back to France in the following one...  
(I think I'm not ready myself tbh...)
> 
> The Christmas truce really happened in 1914, and the football match, according to some sources too!  
Freddie's mum died in 1915; thank god I rewatched season one and remembered to check her gravestone, so that's canon.
> 
> Thank you for reading and let me know what you think!


	10. I fight a war I may never see won

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some new acquaintances and reunions with old... friends?
> 
> Tommy is back down in the tunnels for the first time since the tunnel collapse, and the battle of Verdun is looming dangerously close on the horizon. Freddie Thorne has had a though time and it just helps to put the blame on someone, right?
> 
> Also, songbirds.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Patty Griffin "As cold as it gets"]

29TH DECEMBER 1915 [BIRMINGHAM; NEW STREET STATION]

Goodbye was hard.  
Arthur, Ada, Finn and Polly cried, John and Tommy’s faces were hot from a crimson blush and they couldn't get too many words out.

“Will you write, Tommy?” Finn sniffed, hanging around his older brother’s middle as if his life depended on it. Tommy squeezed him back hard, and when Finn looked up at him with big eyes he nodded. He’d have to. For Finn, and for Ada, and for Polly too really.  
His aunt gave him a weary smile, half proud, half worried.

Once the brothers had boarded the train and it started to slowly roll out of the station, Arthur kicked Tommy in the shin so he’d get up again and wave at their family.  
Tommy though it was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.  
He dropped back down in his seat immediately once they were out of sight and found himself incapable of joining Arthur and John’s conversation, gazing seemingly careless but truly longingly out of the window at the rolling hills slicked by pelting rain. His breath coated the glass in a vaning, white, cloudy shimmer, making the landscape look even more like a watercolour painting. It was cold, even inside the train.

As much as Tommy tried emptying his head, suppressing the thoughts bubbling up deep inside of his brain, he simply couldn’t quite will his mind to exist as a blank slate. Truth be told, he had never been exactly good at thinking about nothing at all. Boring and easy. Well, easy for others, not for him. Never had been, but what a curse that was sometimes.  
He finally settled on dwelling on the sensation of how strange his uniform felt on his body. So clean and soft, yet stiff and unfamiliar, not slick with mud or crusted over with earth, not smelling of rotting soil but giving off the scent of soap and even worse, of home. He banned the thought as well after that realisation and forced himself to listen to his brother’s talk after all.  
They were recounting the news they’d heard from the frontlines and where they’d be going now. Gallipoli was a most likely a lost cause and the British would lose to the Ottomans. Arthur would go to Arras, while he was still healing and train a new lot of snipers. He had proven his talent again in Gallipoli before being badly wounded. John would go up to Ypres, as always a region in the risk of another bigger attack by the German forces. Tommy had orders to first report at Amiens before they would presumably send him back to the tunnels underneath the Somme.

“The winter in the east is worse they say,” Arthur murmured, crossing his arms tighter in front of his chest. Even in the compartment his breath formed a white, steaming cloud. “Heard only the Russians deal with it as if it was nothing.”

“Pfff,” John snorted opposite him, slouching down even further in his seat. “If you were fighting every single battle shitfaced drunk on vodka, Arthur, you wouldn’t feel the cold either.”

“And Austria-Hungary, they say, has lost a whole army somewhere in the bloody snow,” Arthur continued and John started laughing this time. “Can’t find them anymore.”

“How does one lose an army? A whole army? Fucking idiots!”

“Bet the Russians combined with a winter that could be counted as an enemy itself isn’t a force you want to face,” Tommy threw in and made his brothers go quiet with his sudden participation in the conversation. A fucking know-it-all-and-even-more. He thought he could hear their thoughts. “And anyways, we’re losing Gallipoli to the Turks. So we shouldn’t laugh about anyone losing to an enemy stronger than themselves. Fucking hypocrisy that is.”

“At least our officers don’t practise the punishment of shackling men naked to trees until their feet freeze to the ground,” John mumbled, and Tommy mistook it for a counter-argument, giving him an annoyed look. Of course, he knew an answer to even that. Never short of answers, but sometimes bloody stupid at interpreting people’s utterings and entwined intentions. Intentions that were not to generally attack him and his opinions at any given opportunity. Polly would have rolled her eyes at his constant need to defend himself. The thought alone let him put more spite than necessary in his words.

“And what would you do, John, if more and more of your men deserted because they are not willing to fight for your country anymore, eh? It’s one last desperate try to keep all those smaller peoples united under their emperor's crown. So I guess they need some efficient measures to keep up their respects. If a man won’t walk into battle for them, they decide that he doesn’t need his feet at all. Their methods are mad but very successful I’d believe.”

The rest of the train ride the brothers spent in silence, stuck in their own heads, trying to imagine what would await them back in France. John changed sides in the compartment after a while, shifting ever closer to Tommy for warmth. He would never ever hold a grudge against him. Tommy could be a prick as much as he liked. What a sorry example of a prick he was though, already feeling guilty for lashing out at his younger brother earlier.

Just outside London, they ended up huddling even closer together when the train was halted for over an hour. Some problem on the tracks.  
Tommy fell asleep at some point, head dropping onto Arthur’s shoulder, who slung an arm around his younger brother’s chest, keeping him in a more or less comfortable and upright position. John drifted off soon after.  
Just Arthur couldn’t force his eyes to close.  
He kept on looking at his kid brothers’ sleeping forms.  
John with his mouth hanging open and one hand curled into Tommy’s coat.  
Tommy holding his injured arm tightly to his chest with his right, dark, soft shock of hair resting snug on Arthur’s shoulder, face obscured by the longer strands falling into his forehead. How much smaller he looked when he slept. All that wit and words that could cut like razor blades hidden away in a young man’s unimposing body. True, his body had hardened, he was less wiry, more made of steel since the tunnels but there, slumped against Arthur’s shoulder he looked a child again.  
It all reminded him of cold Winter nights when they’d still been kids sharing a bedroom, and Tommy had always been too cold to fall asleep. Would crawl under Arthur’s blanket then, snuggling up against him. Even when they were older he’d try to get at least half of his body under Arthur’s blanket, thinking his brother was asleep already and wouldn’t notice. And John boy had sometimes woken up in the middle of the night and decided he’d treat himself to some warmth and cuddles now. He always woke both Tommy and Arthur up when he squeezed himself in between them.  
He missed those times so much these days. Back when he’d still been able to keep his kid brothers (more or less) safe. How was he to do a big brother’s job now?  
At Calais they’d be separated again.  
John would return to the place he’d cheated death already once before, and Tommy would sooner or later be deep underground again, where he too had cheated death before.  
Arthur hoped it was true what their grandfather had once told them when they had been kids.

“Shelby men have nine lives like the filthy street cats they are.”

1ST JANUARY 1916 [OVILLERS-LA-BOISSELLE, SOMME]

“Private Shelby reports, Captain.”

“At ease. How was your holiday?”

Tommy remained mute with a half open mouth for a moment, until Captain Hance looked at him directly.

“T’was good, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

“You’re a bad liar, Shelby,” Hance chuckled, gazing back at the map in front of him. “But I don’t judge you. Most of you boys come back more homesick than before.”

“I am ready to be put back into service, Sir,” Tommy changed the topic. He was not here to be comforted by the Captain. “If you give me the location of Frederick Thorne and Daniel Owen, I will join them immediately.”

“Are you certain you are fit for the tunnels, Shelby?” Hance asked, looking up at Tommy again, taking in his appearance with doubt in his eyes. “Anyways, Daniel Owen is still at Étaples, and Frederick Thorne has been assigned to a new team.”

Tommy’s heart sank at these words. He’d hoped to see both of them again, Freddie especially. He wasn’t sure what to do now. Without them he did not feel ready for the tunnels after all. He didn’t let his disappointment show on his face, but couldn’t formulate an answer either.

“I have arranged a new deployment for you as well, Shelby, but if you are not ready yet, they will be fine without you for another week or two,” the Captain continued when nothing but silence came from Tommy’s side. “What do you say, Shelby?”

He could see something in the young man’s blue eyes. Something he hadn't seen there before and couldn’t place. Those eyes; he had instantly noticed them, when he had volunteered. But something had changed in them since. Hance was not sure he wanted to know what it was.  
“They are good men too, Thomas,” he added, wanting to help his soldier make a decision he clearly struggled with.

“Tell me where I need to go, Sir,” Tommy finally replied with a nod before setting his jaws tightly.

-

The following morning, Tommy descended a shaky, wooden ladder for the first time in well over a month. It felt more like years to him. He had put the still clean and soft, blue hat on and got rid of the splint on his arm in the cold morning air, determined to figuratively bury himself in work again now. He didn’t care anymore, if the men he had been assigned to would be nice, hard-working or maybe even funny like Danny. He’d just do his work and fuck knew for how long he’d hold out anyways.  
His mood was considerably dark already when an older tunneller led him down a narrow gallery, and he was even more pissed when he was told that he’d have to make the rest of the way on his own. On his knees too, because the tunnel had hit hard rock and they had only dug a small, narrow way under it.

“Fuck it,” Tommy told himself and took a deep breath before he lowered himself down onto his knees and started crawling. His arm was very much not ready for this just yet and after a few yards, Tommy decided three limbs had to be enough to move forward.  
After two agonizing minutes of crawling through the claustrophobic tunnel, the way broadened and Tommy could walk the rest of the way in a crouched position.  
At the end of the tunnel, he found two men, apparently just taking a break and nursing their bottles.

“Oi, you must be the new one,” the first one of them said, not in an unfriendly way. He looked a lot older than Tommy, probably in his late thirties and most likely a Welsh man from the mines.

“Yup,” Tommy replied, in a much less friendly attitude.

“I’m Dylan, this is William,” he pointed at the other man, who was approximately the same age as Tommy and nodded at him with a smile.

“And I’m here to work, not to have a drink and a laugh,” Tommy grumbled, observing that the second man narrowed his eyes at him and then looked confusedly at the man named Dylan.

“Ah, don’t worry, Will. Seems they sent us a Brummie. You’ll understand him after listening long enough.” With that he got up and handed Tommy a pickaxe. “Show us what you can do then, Brummie boy. We’ve hit hard rock again, so we’ll train our arms instead of our legs for a change.”

Tommy glared at him but started working the ground at the end of the tunnel anyways. After a few minutes, his wrist was already acting up but he ignored it, feeling enough anger burn inside of him to keep going without mercy.  
Until there was a hand on his arm.

“Is not healed,” the man who hadn’t spoken until now said, standing beside Tommy.  
Tommy shrugged his arm off.  
“It’s good enough.”

“Leave him be, Will,” Dylan interrupted, not stopping to pack dirt into sacks. “He’ll know best himself. Or not… and then he’ll have to live with it.”

They worked in silence, William bringing the pickaxe down well-measured and steadily, but time and again worriedly observing Tommy in his relentless efforts of driving his own pickaxe into the hard ground as if he had to win some sort of race.  
When Dylan started to breathe heavily after a while, hours must’ve passed and he suggested they take a break. But Tommy refused and carried on.

They had gone through three candles, when Tommy’s body finally couldn’t take it anymore. One moment he felt dizzy, the next he was on the ground shaking, muscles spasming, and he couldn’t breathe.

“He’s got the shakes, Dylan,” William stammered, already trying to prop Tommy’s body against his own and dragging him back towards the exit.

“No bloody wonder that is now, is it?” Dylan sighed, dropping everything to help his comrade.  
Tommy coughed and gasped desperately for air, all while trying to will his limbs to stop shaking violently. He felt Dylan grab his chest and William’s firm grip under his knees.  
This wasn’t happening.  
Not on his first day back down here.  
No air.  
No fucking air to breathe.  
But there must’ve been air because the other two men were alright.  
Why couldn’t he breathe?  
Why for fuck’s sake was he back down here and where were Freddie and Danny?

“It’s alright, Brummie boy,” Dylan said, grabbing Tommy under his armpits and dragging him backwards through the tight part of the tunnel. “You just need some fresh air.”

Once they had managed to get Tommy out of the tunnel, William threw his jacket on the frozen ground and they put him down, covering him with his own jacket. The coughs turned to dry retches before Tommy could finally draw in deep breaths of ice cold air again.

Dylan lit a cigarette and William offered Tommy his bottle after the latter had managed to push himself up on his elbows.  
Tommy gulped down two big mouthfuls, his face twisting when the third sip stayed in his mouth long enough for the sickly sweet taste to develop.  
“The fuck is this?” he coughed, handing the bottle back to William.

“Cola,” Dylan answered instead. “The sugar keeps us going. In a month, you'll love it and won't want anything else ever again!”

William wiped his face on his sleeve, and it took Tommy a moment to realize that his skin was dark still even after most of the mud had come off. He was probably staring a little too obviously.

“Look, boy,” Dylan interfered with Tommy’s staring. “I know you were one of the three lads who survived the tunnel collapse down South in November. Lochnagar Mine, eh? You’re a good man, of that I am sure. But you boys had broad and high tunnels. We up here have to save our air because there isn’t an awful lot down there, you understand? Can’t work your ass off like a madman and not even take a break. We need to take breaks or we’ll be flopping around like fish on land down there.”

Tommy nodded, ashamed he had treated those soldiers badly earlier. He had no right to be a prick and apparently he needed to remind himself of that on a daily basis lately. They all did their best. But then again Tommy just couldn’t help being a prick sometimes.

“So, let’s try with the introduction again, shall we?” Dylan grinned, baring a row of yellow teeth. “Captain told me your name, but I forgot. Unless you want us to keep calling you ‘Brummie boy’? I don’t mind.”

“I’m Tommy,” Tommy mumbled and offered them his hand. They both took it. “Thanks for… getting me out of there.”  
They nodded with a smile, and Dylan offered Tommy a cigarette, which he gladly accepted. After the first exhale of smoke, he couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer and addressed William directly, trying to speak in a more clean accent, like he had heard the richer people talk about their nonsense. “Where are you from?”

William spoke of the Bloemfontein diamond mines where he used to work, the South African Native Labour Corps and seeing snow for the first time in France. Even though English was clearly not his mother tongue, he seemed to enjoy talking, and Tommy found himself hanging on his lips, like back then when he’d been a kid and their grandfather had told them stories of stolen horses and treasures buried in the cuts.

“The only thing, English people not understand about tunnels,” William ended his stories, “is you need birds down in tunnels.”

“Birds?” Tommy asked dumbfoundedly.

“Yeah. William says that they’d keep small songbirds down in the narrow tunnels because they will stop singing when the air runs out or gets toxic,” Dylan explained. “He says it worked well for them in the diamond mines.”

“Small songbirds… like canaries?” Tommy asked, feeling like an eager schoolboy.

-

He was dead tired that night, but he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and wrote a letter to Finn. He told him about William and his stories from Africa. That one could see real lions and giraffes down there, and that you had to cross a huge desert to get to the sea. He also told Finn that they’d get canaries to keep them company in the tunnels, because radios don’t work down there. He didn’t want to tell Finn the real reasons why the birds would be useful, but he imagined his little brother would like the idea of knowing Tommy had songbirds to keep him company far below the ground. Everything, even a war, was still somehow magical to a kid in Finn’s age.  
He posted the letter the next morning before his shift started, and he felt alright climbing down the shaky, wooden ladder, knowing the William and Dylan would be down there.

28TH FEBRUARY 1916 [EN ROUTE TO VERDUN, DÉPARTEMENT MEUSE]

Gallipoli had fallen over a month ago, the Germans were pushing the lines more and more into the heart of France, and now the French forces most definitely needed help further in the East. The Warwickshire Yeomanry was assigned to Verdun, where the fighting had started on the 21st of February, but Tommy was still surprised at Captain Hance’s orders that he board a train too and join his old regiment.

“The tunnels can wait, Shelby. This has priority now.”

The prospect of going over the top at the whistle blow again didn’t exactly trigger giddy feelings in Tommy’s stomach, contrary to getting to see all the Birmingham lads again.  
He left Dylan and William in the company of their new friends and helpers, two canaries named George (after the king) and Polly (after a particular aunt). The tunnellers wished him luck and both of them hugged him goodbye with such force, Tommy didn’t dare to think of the possibility he might never see them again, or the birds. George had developed a habit of sitting on Tommy’s shoulder when they took them outside in the evening. He didn’t mind the smoke that engulfed Tommy almost constantly above ground, while Polly was definitely not amused. How fitting that was.

Tommy didn’t sit down once he was on the train bound for Verdun. He walked the small corridor, peering into every compartment while the cold, frozen French country flew by. He knew that John and Arthur would not be on this train, but Freddie might as well be.

“Excuse me,” Tommy muttered when another soldier stood in his way. The man stepped aside and Tommy squeezed past him. He didn’t look at the man, too focused on checking every compartment, but then he was gripped by his uniform.

“If that’s not my favourite, clay-kicking Sergeant Major,” a familiar, hoarse voice accompanied the firm grip. Tommy spun around and was faced with Danny’s gap-toothed grin.

“Danny,” was all Tommy could get out and he did his best to mimic the pat on the shoulder he received from Danny.

“We weren’t sure you’d be on… on this train too,” Danny stuttered, smile gone a little shy, and Tommy for the first time got the impression that the other man didn’t really look him in the eyes. He also blinked a little too often.  
Before he could give it more thought, Danny opened the next compartment door, revealing Freddie Thorne and Jeremiah the preacher from Birmingham, and also the only other black person Tommy and most of the other lads had ever seen in their life until the war.  
He greeted Jeremiah with a handshake, and turned around to Freddie, who had not looked at him yet but continued to stare out of the window.

“Freddie…” Tommy started but didn’t know what else to say. His friend looked pale, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks hollow. Freddie looked like a dead man walking.

Due to the lack of words, Tommy plopped down in the seat opposite of Freddie, and Danny and Jeremiah started asking questions, which Tommy gave short, half-hearted answers to. He was glad someone was talking though. When Danny started asking about home, the air in the compartment was suddenly pregnant with tension, and soon the explosion should follow.

“D’you know that Hance actually offered me to go home, Tommy?” Freddie suddenly asked, and Tommy shifted uncomfortably in his seat at how much spite his words carried. “But I asked him to send you because you needed it more. Fucking fool that I am. Thinking about everyone else first. You’d never do anything like that for me, Tommy, would you?”

Freddie was looking right at him now, tears welling up in the corner of his eyes but they did not quite taint the utter disgust in his gaze. Tommy felt his own well-trained, cold demeanor take over.

“It’s not my fault she died, Freddie.”

Danny and Jeremiah both got up in unison and closed the compartment door behind their backs. They obviously wanted to give this argument the space it needed.

“But you fucking knew,” Freddie burst. “You fucking knew before me, Tom. Her neighbour sent me two letters. Second one said a friend of mine had come to ask after her just three days after she died. You knew before me! And you didn’t do anything about that.”

“I went to the burial,” Tommy countered, careful to not put any emotion in his words. His eyes followed the naked, crooked trees outside the window for a moment. “Bought some-”

“-fucking flowers and a fucking prayer from your aunt is not what I needed stuck here in France all alone,” Freddie cried. “I know you’re not big on writing letters, eh Tom? But how long have you been back? In fact, I know. I asked the Captain. Been back here since late December and your new, fucking team was assigned to a tunnel about a mile from mine. You see, I asked about you. You didn’t. You didn’t even try to find me and see how I'm doing. Fuck you, Tommy. Fuck you and your fucking self-obsession. I’m glad yours wasn’t the last face my mum ever saw.”

It didn’t show on Tommy’s face but the words hit their target and it hurt like hell. There was nothing he could say now to appease Freddie. Maybe nothing ever would. His eyes clung to the trees behind the glass again. It had started to snow lightly, the tiny, delicate flakes indicating that it was very cold outside. Yet inside, Freddie’s anger seemed to radiate from him, even now in this awful silence, and Tommy couldn’t bare the heat and stuffiness of the compartment any longer.  
He got up and headed for the door.

“Hope you had a nice fucking Christmas, Tommy!” Freddie yelled after him.

Tommy ripped the compartment door open and slammed it shut again behind himself. He passed Danny and Jeremiah in the corridor, snuck past them without a word and headed towards the front of the train.

When he had reached the far end of the last wagon before the lokomotive, he sunk down against the wall in the corridor. There were no empty compartments and he couldn’t get himself to sit with anyone right now so here was fine.  
His thoughts flicked back to Danny, his rapid blinking and looking back over his shoulder ever so often, the way the backs of his hands were covered in scratch marks. And Freddie’s sunken cheeks and the ghostly pallor of his skin. He had thought of Freddie every day over Christmas and here in France down in the tunnels too. But he hadn’t tried to find him, that much was undeniable. He had not asked for his position once. Coming back after Christmas, he had believed he’d join both Freddie and Danny again anyways, but when that hadn’t happened, he had not pressed on. He was a fucking coward. Fucking self-obsessed maverick. Freddie was probably right with everything he’d said.  
Tommy only noticed he was knocking his boot into the wall of the compartment in a repetitive manner, when the door opened and the face of a young soldier appeared.

“Oi, can you please stop that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This chapter is some sort of interlude before we follow Tommy and the others into battle at Verdun. I have come to realize that I never really wrote his detailed experiences of the trench warfare so far, and I intend to change that in the following chapter.
> 
> Be prepared...
> 
> It would mean a whole lot to me if you would take your time to tell me what you think so far, and please feel free to share any ideas/suggestions for future chapters with me!  
Would you like to see more flashbacks etc?


	11. In the bleak midwinter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter title taken from Harold Darke und Neville Marriner "In the bleak midwinter"]

29TH FEBRUARY [VERDUN, DÉPARTEMENT MEUSE]

If Tommy had seen the tunnels as a claustrophobic nightmare so far, then what was left of the trenches at Verdun was trying to claim that title from them.  
Crammed with men, smelling of rotting flesh, piss, sweat. The odour of fear.  
Rats seemed to mingle with the shivering men; some soldiers kicked at them, others let them crawl over their bodies, paralysed by the atrocity of battle.  
To Tommy’s right, a young man sat in the mud of what had been the front line support trench and rocked back and forth, slurring his words “Th-thirty-eight, f-fucking thirty-nine, forty…”.  
Forty shells a minute. Not that Tommy had had time to count too. He stumbled on, one link in the chain of soldiers.

Mons had been fast, and scary, and chaotic, but compared to Verdun it seemed like a picnic now. The French supplied most of the companies, but their will seemed to be close to breaking. One could hear word about deserters for the first time. The night they had arrived, Freddie had thrown a tantrum about not wanting to share a dugout with Tommy, and the boys had discussed this until they registered shelling. Further away at first, but soon there was no dugout left and they were glad they had not been on the inside. Ever since, there had been no time for gossip anymore.

“Tommy! Over here!”

Tommy craned his neck, unable to see over the heads of most men in front of him, prompting him to silently curse his height.

“Tom! On your left for fuck’s sake!!”

Arthur appeared in the sea of khaki uniforms and grabbed his brother’s arm.  
“Come on.”  
He dragged Tommy on to the frontline trench and then off to the left.  
“They got a job for us,” was all Arthur said before he made his brother step into the General’s dugout.

2ND MARCH 1916 [VERDUN, MORT ORME - MORT HOMME]

Tommy could barely feel the earth raining down onto him anymore now. He blinked against the bits that got into his eyes, but that was about all he was capable of. He might've just kept them closed to begin with, but they wouldn't let him. He’d tried so many times now, and every time someone would shake him or slap him on the cheek.

“We need six men.” They’d said.

John beside him was falling asleep again, and Arthur shook him firmly. Again. How quickly things became a grim routine.  
His brother was barely an arm’s length away, but Tommy realized with mild horror that he could not hear him. Hear anything at all really. The world was quiet.

Some day they’d call this place Mort Homme. Dead man.

He was so tired.  
John finally blinked sluggishly, and when Arthur pulled him upright his face contorted to a gruesome mask of pain, mouth wide open in a scream.  
A silent one, at least to Tommy’s ears.  
He was scared his eyes might fail him next.

“Go North-West and try to reach Mort Orme. Deliver this message to the general there. Tell them we will send a whole division to their aid in two days time. We shall hold those hills!”

There had been nothing left. No general to give anything to.

Jeremiah appeared in Tommy’s line of vision now, mouthing his name. Why the fucking fuck couldn’t he hear? He didn’t remember when he had last heard John’s screams, Arthur’s Romani curses, his own rasping breaths-  
Jeremiah’s eyes went wide suddenly and he ducked his head. Dirt came raining down on them again. Tommy only opened his eyes when he was roughly pat on the cheek.  
They had said they would send help.  
A whole division.  
Where the fuck were they?

His body hadn’t switched off all of its senses Tommy realized when Jeremiah pushed an arm under his shoulder and heaved him upright.  
His mind flashed back to the previous night. Never had he run faster in his life. Never had he hit the ground harder.  
Tommy hadn’t thought he’d take his first bullet this way; shot in the back. Twice.  
Bang - Left shoulder.  
Bang - right leg.  
John had fallen beside him one second later.

Then Freddie and Danny had been there and Tommy could too clearly recall his own hoarse cries as they dragged him in between them, back into the crater they had chosen for their refuge. Everything after that was a blur of pain, shells, screams, bullets and Jeremiah’s skilled hands and prayers.

Looking over Jeremiah’s shoulder, out of frustration of being unable to understand his words, Tommy saw Arthur throw another hand grenade over the edge, toward the German dugouts.  
They were lost. Six men against an army. Waiting in a bomb crater to be overrun.  
The canteen that was shoved against his lips made him focus on Jeremiah once more. This man really was a godsend; he knew just how thirsty Tommy was before even Tommy himself knew. He gulped down as much stale water as he could get. Jeremiah pulled the canteen away after three sips. Water was running out. Tommy was stunned the others were still up to wasting it to two dying men.  
Another shell dropped. The rain of earth and shell particles grew more and more familiar with each time. One constant in the chaos at last.  
With his eyes closed it reminded Tommy of playing by the cut with Freddie and his brothers, throwing gravel into the air and sometimes at each other. Those memories somehow didn’t seem to have a sound anymore either, just a feeling.  
Sharp, pointy pebbles piercing bare feet, cold in the shade, elsewhere pleasantly warm from sunlight. And the pitter-patter feeling of another fistful, when it pounced off unmarred, milky-white boy chests and arms and thighs.  
He felt a smile tug at his lips.  
Maybe it would be a relief once his eyes failed him too. He could pretend-

The pain surprised him.  
It shot through his whole body, warming the limbs that had gone cold and heavy from lying on the unforgiving ground.  
He should’ve written Finn another letter before they’d set out on this mission. But at least he’d think Tommy died in the company of yellow songbirds.  
When his limbs left the ground altogether, it took Tommy a moment to realize he was being carried.  
When he opened his eyes, their crater was no longer a crater but gaped wide open in the direction of where the German shells and bullets came from.  
Freddie had grabbed Tommy’s legs under the knees, a cut on his chin dripping blood onto Tommy’s thigh. There was a huge bloodstain there, but most likely not because of Freddie. He couldn’t tell who was responsible for carrying his torso, only that the bloody bastard didn’t seem to mind the fact that his shoulder had a hole in it all that much.  
Then again, this was probably not the time to waste any, trying to get comfortable.

-

“Shit… Tommy, please!”

“You need to wake up, man!”

“Fucking- Fucking hell, Tommy! Wake up!”

Truth be told, the return of sound, voices to be precise, was not a pleasant experience at all. The silence, darkness, and most importantly, numbness of sleep seemed so much sweeter.

“Come on, man. Come on. Open your eyes, Tom.”

Eyelids as heavy as the iron gates to Charlie’s yard had once been to a little boy. Tommy allowed the world to reclaim him, and as a thanks his body went into painful spasms.  
An arm across his chest held him in place, mostly.

“It’s alright. Shh.”

“Keep John awake, eh? Arthur? For fuck’s sake! Stop crying, man!”

“Fucking hell. He’s burning up. Oi, Tommy, you hear me?”

The cut on Freddie’s chin was not bleeding anymore. The dried blood had taken a dirty brown colour on his blue-ish skin in the harsh morning light. The world was cold, the ground was frozen and covered in a thin veil of fresh snow, each man’s breath steaming like a dragon’s.

“You wanna melt the snow for us, eh Tom?”  
Danny’s voice.  
“Force spring to finally come and safe us, yeah?”

It wasn’t snowing now. The sky above them was clear and blue as a cornflower. Slowly, Tommy took in his surroundings and realised they were sitting in another crater, a deeper one this time.  
He turned his head and saw John beside him, his head in Arthur’s lap and his eyes rolling back in his head every time he managed to open them. His face painted in nearly the same shades of blue and purple as the sky.

“Share some of your warmth with our John boy here, eh Tom?” Arthur smiled over at him, picking up John’s other hand to rub it between his own. Tears were still making their way down his sunken cheeks.

“Right, Tom,” Freddie sighed when he kneeled beside Tommy’s head. “Let’s cool your fiery temper a little.”  
He would have made a snarky comment; bit back something about how he wasn’t the one with a temper, but he had no energy.  
First there were Freddie’s cold fingers on his forehead, smoothing back his fringe, out of his eyes, and then he placed an ice-cold cloth there instead.  
“Snow’s at least good for something today.”

“Coulda just used me hands,” John croaked beside Tommy, and despite the hopelessness six men smiled at that.

-

The day went by agonizingly slow. Somehow the hail of bullets and rain of shells had at least kept the clock going.  
They’d probably still come after them - find them. Sooner or later.  
Jeremiah had led them further down the hill, away from the German line, but the enemy’s progress would be steady and the promised British division was still nowhere in sight.  
Their own small troop’s retreat had reached its limits. Tommy and John were in no state to be moved again, and soon there would be no need anyways.

“Y-you need to leave us behind,” Tommy rasped, trying to put stone-cold rationalism in his words. “Me and John are not gonna-”

“Shut up, Tommy,” Arthur interrupted him, reversing their roles for once.

“Why ‘ave six men face c-certain death, if four… if four could make it out alive?”

“Shut up, Thomas.”  
Everyone looked at Jeremiah. No one had ever heard him say anything like that. It was their second day without food, so maybe that could be blamed.  
“We fight together, we die together. We will not run. Will not get far anyways. We should pray to the Lord to welcome our souls and thank him for his kindness. At least we die together.”

When no one said anything after that, Jeremiah started singing. Quietly at first, then Danny joined in. Freddie and Arthur followed, even John mouthed this or that. Tommy’s lips remained a thin line.

-

“I can’t get John to wake up! Fucking help me here!”

“Tommy is bleeding through the bandage. I need a fresh roll of gauze.”

In the bleak mid-winter.

The words were etched into his brain. And repeating the lines over and over and over again, like some sort of mantra made the pain more bearable. He hadn’t slept, not one minute the whole fucking night. Falling asleep was a dangerous endeavor now.

Frosty wind made moan  
Earth stood hard as iron  
Water like a stone

“We used them all up, Freddie. There’s none left.”

“Fucking hell! Then give me something else!”

Snow had fallen  
Snow on snow on snow  
In the bleak midwinter  
Long, long ago

Tommy heard his own low, animal-like moan when the soaked mess of fabric was temporarily lifted from his shoulder, only to be firmly pressed back on it again, now with the addition of Danny’s shirt.

Angels and Arc Angels  
May have traveled there  
Cherubim and Seraphim  
Thronged the air

What were the fucking Germans waiting for? Until they starved to death? Or froze to death? They could be taken out so easily, it felt like mockery that it didn’t happen already.  
He felt cold, even though they told him he wasn’t; that his skin was scorching hot. John had a fever too now, but he had managed to sit up, and stay awake.  
Tommy received a firm slap on the cheeks almost every minute.

“Stay awake, Tom!”

But only his Mother  
In her maiden bliss  
Worshiped the beloved  
With a kiss

He wanted to keep his eyes shut so badly, not only because a bone-deep fatigue was slowly settling over him, but also because he saw faces in the other men’s steaming breaths.  
You’re imagining things, Tommy.  
You’re imagining things.  
There were voices too.

What can I give him?  
Poor as I am  
If I were a shepherd  
I would give a lamb

Then there was the sound of hooves, but seeing the other’s eyes go wide, everyone quiet, Tommy thought they might be real.  
Cavalry.  
Some mercy at last.  
The Germans had decided to lay their claim and take the whole hill. A brown stallion’s head surfaced above them, its rider wielding a smug smile below a yellow moustache.

“Oh, I see,” he chuckled in a posh London accent. “The message to abort the mission did not quite reach you in time. What a shame. How I wish now I’d got here sooner, but a good game of wist can take its time, as you will know gentlemen!”

If I were a wise man  
I would do my part  
But what I can I give him  
Give him my heart

How his Webley revolver found its way into his hand, Tommy wouldn’t be able to recall later.  
The shot cut through the silent air of dawn. Then there was no moustache left, and a headless body dropped to the ground.

“Fucking hell, Tommy!” Arthur yelled, already on his feet, trying to grab the reins of the panicking horse.

“John ‘n I…. won’t… won’t make it if… maybe with the horse but… John’s better than me, so get him…. just get him somewhere.”

When firm arms grabbed him, Tommy started to struggle, as best as he could. His tactic didn’t seem to bring much success though because the hands remained and the ground was gone.  
“L-let go of me… please… please… i-it hurts-“

Still the firm grip of hands didn’t falter. Then he felt warm, soft fur against his cheek.

“Shhh. S’alright, Tommy eh? As long as it still hurts, it’s alright, brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much angst.
> 
> I am so sorry for hurting Tommy already again...  
Hope you liked it anyways...
> 
> The Brits were not even present at Verdun as far as my research is right... but Steven said Tommy was at Verdun, and I thought so be it!


	12. Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the fashion of the series, I decided to take injuries serious and show that they take time to heal.  
So have a rather long chapter on Tommy in the field hospital and all the things he has to go through there. Nurses were basically doing a doctor's job these days, having a lot of responsibility bestowed on them due to not enough actual doctors being available.  
(I also just finished reading The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason and shamelessly added his (originally Polish) nurse to the story, making her Tommy's nurse.)
> 
> *Lice were a big problem in the trenches and the hospitals (they caused "Trench Fever"), and, as we know, our Shelby boys all have the "lice cut". Two of them will get theirs in this chapter.
> 
> *Amputations were a common thing to happen during the war after injuries to the limbs, and could safe some men's lives since they'd be unfit to serve afterwards and sent home. Yet Tommy is... hugely bothered by them. Featuring the "gypsy way" of dealing with injuries.
> 
> What else can I say? ... Tommy is a horse girl.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Isaac Rosenberg's poem "Dead Man's Dump"]

4TH MARCH 1916 [URGENCY CASES HOSPITAL; LE FAUX MIROIR NEAR RÉVIGNY SUR ORNAIN]

“One last time, soldier,” the white coated man with the round glasses addressed Arthur. “We will do our best to help your brothers, but only after they have been thoroughly checked for lice and cleaned accordingly. The rest of you should report back to your respective generals. I can not allow you inside the premise. The danger of infection is too high and we can’t risk it spreading to the trenches too.”

Arthur sucked in a shaky breath, his eyes wide with rage before he spoke again. “I don’t think you fucking understand me, doctor, right? You see, my brothers here-”

“We could have at least one of your brothers disinfected and examined if you wouldn’t make our job so difficult, soldier.”

It took Freddie’s quick reaction to keep Arthur’s fist from the doctor’s face, and that face intact therefore. “Just let them do their fucking work, Arthur! We need to sort the situation concerning… moustache man and your brother’s fucking… temper.” The last part was said in a low whisper.

“... w-was a deserter, f-fucking coward. S’all you tell ‘em-”

“Shut up, Tommy.”

The doctor glared. First at Tommy, hanging limply between Freddie and Jeremiah, then at Arthur.  
“Are you going to let us take your brothers inside now, or would you like to wait until this one-” he gestured vaguely at Tommy. “-is losing his mind completely due to blood loss?”

-

The sound of a strong slosh of water bouncing off naked skin would be the first memory Tommy later recalled from the field hospital near the frontline. The realisation that he himself was stark naked was the next, and soon after he was hit by the at best lukewarm blow too. He was lying on the cold floor, the wound in his shoulder not protected by anything he supposed, for the water around him soon had the colour of watery strawberry jam. He pat his hand lightly on the flooded ground beside him, the wet smacking sound reminding him that he was only here because he was alive.  
Why had he given her that fucking promise? It had turned into a curse too quickly.

Being sprayed with disinfectant succeeded in reminding him of just how alive he still was.  
Within a few seconds of the mist coating his skin, Tommy was screaming and thrashing, but strong arms quickly held him down.

“Shhh, soldier! Calm down.”

He heard other men scream and cry too, and he couldn’t wrap his head around any possible reason why the medics would be doing this to them.  
His body went limp from the exertion, and his chest felt weighed down heavily by some invisible weight.  
Like the earth had collapsed above him again. Filled up his lungs to the brim, making breathing impossible. Earth turned to wet mud in his lungs. He started spluttering, coughing, retching helplessly until gentle hands turned his head, away from the flooded floor.  
He had been back in the tunnels, when really he was half-drowning on a hospital floor.

“You’ll be in a bed soon, I promise,” the woman the hands belonged to soothed him, signaling two waiting men with a stretcher to approach.

“He needs blood. Get him to the station where they have the transfusions ready... and he’ll need a haircut too,” she told the men, and Tommy felt himself being lifted onto a stretcher, still completely naked.  
If he hadn’t been so exhausted this would have bothered him to great extent. His head lolled to the side and he saw that the tent was filled with more or less panicked men, stripped off their clothes, being washed and disinfected. His eyes slipped close and he felt sleep creep up on him, no barriers to postpone its takeover left.

“The haircut can wait for now though. Won’t need one if he doesn’t make it through the night.”

-

Consciousness came in short bouts.  
He supposed he wasn’t meant to wake up the first time he did.  
Cold metal was digging into his still bare back, a white cloth had been draped over his hips, covering his modesty, and everything else around him was too damn bright white as well.  
The woman, a nurse most likely, was back and in the midst of stitching up his thigh. She looked surprised when she noticed he was awake, but her voice was still as steady and clear as it had been the first time.

“You’re alright, love. You should rest. We’ll take care of you. Close your eyes again. There you go.”

He wanted to ask about John. Where he was, if he was alright, but his mind slipped into darkness again too soon.

-

He was alone when he next woke. In a bed too now, but he couldn’t tell if he was still naked under the heavy army blanket.  
Strange wire was snaking its way from the bend of his arm up to an infusion stand. The liquid in the bag was deep red, and Tommy wondered if the poor lad that it had belonged to before was alright.

Some man in a bed not far from him said, “The Jerries are using flamethrowers now. Mad fucking bastards! One’s got to be glad to be here and not going over the edge right now.”

-

The third time he woke, the fear of how they had treated the bulletwound in his leg kicked in. Back in Étaples, he had seen men, row on row, with amputated limbs, below the ankle, below the knee, above the knee.  
‘Bullet wound to the thigh, untreated for several days, not cleaned properly’ sounded like an all too common story.  
He was feeling nauseous from fear.  
The nurse had been placing stitches in his thigh when he had first regained consciousness. He just wasn’t sure if there had been anything left below his thigh at that time.  
Tommy wanted to kick the blanket off, sit up and have a look, but he couldn’t as much as move his baby finger. His head was swimming and he noticed a dull ache in his left shoulder. He tried to concentrate on his leg, or move it, or just tell if there was a similar pain to be felt there.  
All he could tell was that he was sweltering hot beneath the blanket and that he could feel neither of his legs from the waist down.  
Suddenly there were hands on his face and someone was shushing him.  
An oil lamp dipped the room into an orange glow a moment later. When the soft fingers wiped his cheeks and below his eyes, Tommy realized he had been crying.  
He squeezed his eyes shut, a wave of shame coming over him even in the delirious state he was in. The hands came back to feel his cheek, his forehead.  
He hadn’t looked at her but somehow felt it was the same nurse again.  
She didn't speak, not this time, and after a moment the light of the lamp beside his bed went out again and he felt her leave.  
He was glad she hadn’t used words. Words would have been too much.  
He would still have to ask her about his leg at some point though.

20TH JUNE 1912 [LICKEY HILLS, WORCESTERSHIRE]

“You’re fine, Greta.”

“It bloody hurts, Tom!”

He grinned at her, his eyebrows going up in disbelieve. “When did you become so whiny?”  
He received a punch in the chest for that.

“Bastard.” She turned away from him, sulking. In a somewhat playful way, but Tommy was young, dumb and very much in love, and therefore scared she was actually mad at him.

“It’s just a bee sting, Greta…” He touched her arm gently, tugging at it so she’d look at him. “Want me to… kiss it better?”

He felt heat rise to his cheeks and kind of wished she’d keep her head turned after all.  
She turned around. Of course.  
She had a mocking smile on her face and her hand brushed over her skirt, revealing the angry, red bump on her leg, just above her knee.  
“Yes please.”  
Tommy’s ears were bright red, and if Greta didn’t know better, she would’ve thought bees had stung him there and on his cheeks too. She reached her hand out, touching his high cheekbones for a moment, laughter bubbling in her throat when she quickly grabbed him by the neck then, pushing him down towards her leg.  
He gave a light huff but didn’t fight her too much.  
And there he was, kneeling beside her in the grass, bending his head down, lips connecting to the stinging bump. Her hand came back to rest on the back of his head, soft, dark hair like velvet under her fingertips. He was peppering kisses all over her thigh now, and she could see that his ears and cheeks had gone back to their usual porcelaine, freckle-smattered complexion.

“Better?” he asked when he sat up again, and she answered him by grabbing his face and kissing away that last bit of shyness and uncertainty she loved so much about him. His hands came up to cup her face as well, and Greta dropped hers down to his shoulders, hugging him closer, pressing their chests together.  
Freddie would call them “absolutely disgusting” if he saw them now.  
He didn’t like sharing Tommy all that much, but he’d say it with a smug grin on his face. Freddie was alright.

Tommy however was getting a little high on their kiss right then, his hands suddenly on her thighs, pushing her skirt back up, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth and biting down carefully.  
He’d always liked doing that.  
He had however freaked out a little when Greta had done it to him once. She might’ve possibly bitten down a little too hard, but Tommy pouting with an even more swollen lip had been a wonderful sight to behold afterwards.  
She tickled him just when he was making his way into her underwear.  
You gotta keep it a challenge for the boys; can never make it all too easy for them.  
His whole body twitched, muscles going tense, but she didn’t stop until he was helplessly lying in the grass, wriggling like a worm, trying to protect himself from her skilled hands.  
God, he was ticklish.  
Body taut as a bow string, every single, little touch of her fingers was too much, and his strangled laughter was intercepted by hiccuped “Stop”s and “Please”s.  
She collapsed on top of him after she had decided he’d had enough, listening to his heartbeat and feeling his quick breaths.

“I love you, Tommy,” she whispered and sat up to kiss the corner of his mouth. He nudged his nose into hers while she was still close enough, and giggled lightly into her mouth when he captured her lips a moment later.  
“Love you too, Greta.”

They lay like that for a long time, knowing they should head back home before it got dark, but it was still warm and Tommy’s even breathing and steady heartbeat beneath her ear on his chest made her want to not move ever again.

-

They finally got up in the warm glow of the setting sun, and just as Tommy was turning around to gather up their bag, Greta looked at him with wide eyes, fear written over her face.

“Your hands are shaking, Tommy.”

He looked down and they were indeed shaking. He wanted to look back up at her, tell her it was alright, but he couldn’t move his head.

“He’s bleeding. Hold him still, for goodness’ sake!”

He wanted to cover his ears with his hands, shut those other voices out, and then go home with Greta.  
They needed to leave him alone; those other voices, but he couldn’t move and the sunset glow turned to cold, white light in a tent, smell of fresh summer grass to sharp antiseptic fumes and angry flesh.

-

He woke up to his own low whimpering sound. His upper body felt cold, and the parts still covered by the heavy army blanket were itching terribly from the rough fabric. There was a new bag high up on the infusion stand, steadily dripping red blood into his veins.

“You did this to yourself, love,” a familiar voice sighed beside him, no real accusation in her words. “I’m sorry you’re hurting again, but I hope this will at least keep you from trying to push yourself up in bed and pop your stitches once more, hm?”

Tommy cried out when she disinfected the fresh stitches and wrapped his shoulder into a new bandage. She was trying to be as gentle as possible, but still worked quickly; she didn’t have all day.  
He was heaving like someone who’d just run for his life when she propped his arm up on a pillow, before offering him some water.

“John… my brother… where’s-” Tommy managed after he’d drank. She put the cup down and gave him a smile.

“He’s alright. Sleeping off the fever. Thankfully you seem to barely have a temperature anymore. You were being quite a worry to all of us when you arrived,” she was still smiling when she said it. He guessed she was about the same age as he himself. “At least both of you haven’t caught the infection that’s going round. Let’s keep it that way, yes? I promised you a haircut days ago and haven’t seen to that yet.”

She laughed when he frowned at her.

“I promise it will hurt less than sewing up your shoulder!”

Tommy swallowed hard. He still hadn’t asked about his leg, but as it turned out, he didn’t need to, when the nurse moved to his other side and lifted the blanket, still talking.  
“- and I am not giving you a choice anyways… “ she squinted at the blackboard on the foot of his bed for a second. “Thomas. Lice have brought this horrible sickness on us and we have to be extra careful now.”

Tommy hadn’t been listening anymore, instead he was bracing himself for the view that might greet him when he looked down now.

“Can you try to move your toes?” she asked, and he feared he might be sick of relief.  
Soon after, he tried to ignore that she did look worried though, when he presumably couldn’t. (He just hadn’t really tried hard enough, right, no need to panic again. He still had two complete legs.) She gently probed the area around the thick bandage and wrinkled her forehead, seemingly thinking about what to do for a moment. Then she straightened and draped the blanket back over him.

“Right. Haircut!”

She was gentle when she cut his hair, but still trimmed it down to nothing more than stubble on his sides. She found the little scar at the back of his head and asked what had happened, and Tommy told her he’d fallen off a horse and onto a fence as a kid.  
She asked if he liked horses, and he found himself starting to almost enthusiastically engage in the conversation. He felt a lot better and hoped that was a good sign, since he didn’t know his energy was entirely connected to being pumped up with another blood transfusion.  
She shifted to look at him when she had shorn off the hair in the back of his head too, his longer locks still left on top of his head, and smiled her kind, infectious smile again.

“It suits you! I think we should keep the longer hair.”

Even though Tommy could tell the woman most likely didn’t get enough sleep and was in a more or less constant hurry, she never let any of the boys in the beds feel that. She’d always think of some kind words and sit with them for a short conversation, managing to cheer them up, if only a little bit. He wished he couldn’t see through her tactics so easily.  
He brought his good hand up to feel how short his sides and back were now. Just short of being bald he thought and glared a little at his nurse. He couldn’t believe he was supposed to look good, ignoring his general condition even.

She moved to his other side after brushing the hair off of his shoulders and his pillow and busied herself unwrapping the bandage around his leg after all. Tommy felt his stomach form a fearful knot again.

“Will it be alright?” he heard himself ask, sounding anxious. “Please don’t…” 

“Wouldn't be beneficial to all your horse-riding, yeah?” she asked after he had gone quiet without finishing his sentence. She seemed to know exactly what he wanted to hear.

“Please promise me I won’t wake up one day and-”

“Bet you're very good with them,” she interrupted him. “You look like a lad who’s kind to animals.”  
She was good at concealing her worry, but the light furrow in her brow as she was changing the bandage gave away that she was not happy with what she saw and made it obvious that she had avoided answering Tommy’s question on purpose.

“I’d love to train some of them to race, but the good breeds are expensive and the admission to a race is even more pricey,” he answered a little sadly when he realized she wasn’t going to give him any clarity, let alone a promise.  
The last bit of gauze stuck to the wound when she pulled it off, and Tommy buried his head in the pillow with a hiss. The thick, disgustingly sweet smell that filled his nose a moment later made him feel sick. He decided to clumsily push the conversation ahead because he couldn’t deal with her worrisome silence.  
“Do you ride horses?”

It was a stupid question. She was a war nurse. No free time to take a quick ride across the torn up fields of France in her spare time. The only people riding horses these days were the cavalry, and they seemed to rather hide in dugouts, playing cards than actually do their duty. But she did finally smile at him, and he tried to see if it was genuine or meant to distract him. He couldn’t tell.

“I used to, yes. As a little girl, but since I work as a nurse I haven’t really had the chance to anymore. You see, in London, I live very close to the hospital I work in, so there’s no need for a horse, and my parent’s home is out in the countryside,” she went on, never stopping her deed in cleaning and getting his thigh patched up again, until there was a cry behind her, in the front of the tent, and she turned around.  
Tommy tried to see what was happening too, but what he observed stunned and terrified him all at once.  
A wailing, naked man was being held up by two nurses, and even though he seemed to be uninjured, he wasn’t able to stand upright. His back bent in a painful angle each time the nurses tried to pull him up. The worst of it was the noises he made though, like a wild, dying animal. Low groans and whimpers, as if he was unable to hear himself. He collapsed on the bed in a sad heap once they let go of him, his arms coming up to shield his face, legs pressing up against his chest. His whole form was wracked by shakes.

“We have more and more of these cases now,” his nurse explained, having noticed that Tommy had gone awfully quiet. “They’re not hurt, but some of them can’t stand on their own or even speak. It’s like they’re stuck somewhere else and can’t get out.”

Tommy thought of the shaking soldier counting the shells in the trenches. He thought of Danny mumbling "They're gonna kill me" over and over again, while they had been stuck in the bomb craters.

“Shell shock they call it,” the nurse interrupted his thoughts. She got up from his bed and leaned a little closer, brushing some hair she had missed earlier off his cheek.  
“You should rest, Thomas.”

-

The fever came back worse than before during the night, and the lamp on Tommy’s bedside table was rarely switched off.  
In one of his clearer, conscious moments, he realized that he couldn’t remember being seen by a real doctor since he’d been here. He hadn’t seen anyone do rounds except the nurses. The only doctor he had seen was the one who had sent Arthur and the boys away right after they had arrived.  
His drowsy thoughts were interrupted when a cup was pressed against his lips. She made him drink what felt like every ten minutes, and changed the cold, wet cloths on his forehead and calves about twice as often. And the smile was missing. She looked so tired, he felt sorry for her having to put up with him. He did ask her if his leg was getting better almost every time though, and she never gave him an answer to that.

“D’you ever s-sleep?” he mumbled, when she wiped his sweaty face with a cold cloth. The smile came back at that, if only for a moment.

“I can sleep when all of you boys manage to stay awake and alive without me,” she whispered, gently dabbing at each of his eyelids.  
“Has anyone ever told you that you have the most beautiful eyes, love?”

A smile tugged at Tommy’s lips at that and he kept his eyes closed after she was done.  
“You always say that, Greta.”

12TH MARCH 1916 [URGENCY CASES HOSPITAL; LE FAUX MIROIR NEAR RÉVIGNY SUR ORNAIN]

“For God’s sake, Margaret! Why is this poor chap even still here in the limbs section? He’s in a blaze. He should be in the secluded area for trench fever.”

“He doesn’t have trench fever, Ellie,” she answered exasperated. She didn’t need the other nurse poking her nose into her cases. Not tonight. She had enough on already with three of her boys in a critical state.

“What’s up with him then? He’s shaking like a leaf and mumbling nonsense. Doesn’t even sound like English.”

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes at Ellie. Didn’t she have something better to do? She was right about poor Thomas mumbling nonsense though. It had started last night when she had still thought he was mostly lucid, but then started talking about some girl. His sweetheart at home most likely. Poor chap.

“Bullet Wound in his thigh’s not healing all that well, so-” she stopped examining Paul’s amputated arm, when Ellie made her way over to the other side of Thomas’ bed and lifted the blankets.  
“-just leave him alone, El!”

“It’s infected.”

Well, what had she been expecting?

“Has Dr. Blake seen this?”

She’d had enough now and strode over to where the other nurse was standing uselessly beside Thomas’ bed. Margaret covered him with the blanket again, then changed her mind, lifted it off completely and grabbed a thinner sheet from one of the supply carts.

“If I show him you know what he’ll do and I kind of… “ she trailed off. “I kind of promised this one I’ll try to not let it come that far.”

“Margaret,” it was said in a whisper but sounded nonetheless accusatory. “Margaret, you know what we do here. Patch and send. We don’t do special treatment. We patch the boys up and put them back out there, or we decide they are not fit to serve anymore and send them home.”  
She purposely left out the third, most common option. Finding a place to bury them.  
“Poor lad could be going home in a bit after he’s recovered from surgery, yet you have decided to risk his life? He’s still going to be a handsome one with one leg less, but his face intact at least. Because he won’t be sent out there anymore to face flamethrowers and shrapnel and-”

“I can save him,” she realized just how desperate she sounded, but now there was no backing away. “And his leg too.”

Ellie looked at her with something close to pity in her eyes. “Think of all the others we pepped up again and sent back to the front. The war is just gonna swallow him up once more, should he ever recover from this. And you’re no doctor, Mag. If Blake finds out you’ve been keeping information from him-”

“Yet I know, in contrast to our dear Dr. Blake, that it is madness to cut off every injured limb that comes in here just because he thinks he’s doing the men a favour by making them unfit to serve any longer. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

17TH MARCH 1916 [URGENCY CASES HOSPITAL; LE FAUX MIROIR NEAR RÉVIGNY SUR ORNAIN]

Tommy had lost all feeling of time and days when he woke up next. The light was too bright and there was a clatter of plates and cutlery in the distance. He realized that he had been moved. There was no bed to his right anymore but only the white canvas cover of the tent. He slowly moved his head to the left side and let his eyes roam over the scene. The beds and people further away were a blurry mess, and when his eyes finally landed on the closest bed to his own he gasped quietly.  
The man was looking right back at him, skin bluish, unblinking eyes wide open just as a fly landed expertly in one of them. He was dead.  
The noise of plates was intercepted by very far away thunder, and Tommy thought he should probably tell someone, report that the man was dead, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from him.  
Below the blanket he could tell that the man’s body was missing not one, but both of his legs.

Breathing got harder, so he tried breathing in and out a little more quickly. It didn’t really help. He should call for someone.  
His right hand slipped off the edge of the bed and grazed the cool canvas cover of the tent. There it was again; a low, thundering noise coming from behind that very cover.  
Maybe the cries of men also came from there, rather than from the patients in here.

Maybe the man hadn’t looked at Tommy when he had died but had tried to listen for the thundering noise of shells and machine guns too.

His breath hitched and he swallowed some saliva the wrong way, prompting a coughing fit.  
The fly took off at that.

He was shaking after the coughing had subsided. His joints were hurting from the fever, and his tongue felt like sandpaper against his gums. Tearing his eyes away from the dead man, he searched for a cup on his bedside table but there was none.  
Had she forgotten about him?  
Another coughing fit shook him. He needed to drink something so badly. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to calm his breathing.

“Are you awake, Thomas?” her voice came from somewhere a few beds away.

He opened his eyes again and looked over to where his nurse was tending to another patient.  
“Yes,” he croaked, and she approached him as soon as she was done.

“He… he’s dead,” Tommy rasped once she was by his side, his eyes not leaving the dead man’s face.

“I know,” she whispered. “We haven’t had time to… We’re literally being flooded with casualties and I thought you wouldn’t wake up to see him like this. I’m sorry.”

Tommy pried his eyes away from the dead man to look at her. “Did you think I wouldn’t… wake up anymore?”

“You were… You are quite a noisy sleeper, Thomas. The boys beside you woke up a lot, so I decided to move you and grant them some peace and quiet.”

She was working faster than ever, made him drink, before unrolling the bandage around his thigh, all while avoiding to look him in the eyes.

“So you put me beside a dead man. Because I can’t disturb him in his sleep anymore, or because you thought… “ Tommy picked the conversation up again in a reproachful manner, but she didn’t seem to listen to him. She didn’t even want to look at him it seemed. He could think of one question that might make her though.  
“Am I dying?”

She finally looked at him at that, like he had caught her stealing desert from a sleeping patient’s bedside table.  
“I just… For God’s sake, we’re risking your life here, Thomas. Yes, the infection is bad and still getting worse. I thought you... I thought you wouldn't make it. Every night this week was a gamble. I can't go on like this. I’m sorry, but I have to tell-”

“No! Please don’t make me a fucking cripple,” he was straight up begging, trying to sit up in bed, taken over by some sort of ‘fight or flight’ sensation. He wouldn’t get very far most likely, and Margaret pushed him back down into the pillows easily before she finally looked at him with tears in her eyes.  
“You know, we could be sending you home in a bit. You could turn your back on this horrible war and go home. Go home to your sweetheart and be with her. I have patched up so many of you boys to be sent to the front again, and then too many of you come back worse and I… I can’t save you anymore. I could maybe get you out of here now with your life.”

He was quiet after that and let her go on, after she’d wiped the tears from her cheeks.  
She let out a small “Dear God,” when she uncovered the wound. The stitches were blackened, and covered in pus, the sickly sweet smell still present.

“You need to take the stitches out,” Tommy tried when he had succeeded in swallowing the rising bile in his throat. His voice was calm again, too tired for any exhausting emotions, but something his grandmother had taught him surfaced in his feverish brain. “Yarrow could help with the infection. If you’d put the leaves on the wound and-”

“You want me to go flower picking to stuff some leaves inside your bandage?” Margaret asked him, shaking her head. “Thomas, maybe that helps with horses, but-”

She was right, Curly also used it with the horses sometimes, but if it helped the horses, why shouldn’t it help him too?  
“Just try it. Please. I’d rather die than-”

“Look, Thomas. That’s enough now. I have sworn to safe lives, not risk them and… “ she was crying again. “I don’t want you to die here and I can’t live with the knowledge that I could’ve saved you, if I just hadn’t been that stubborn in trying to keep a ridiculous promise-”

“You never promised me anything.”

She shook her head again. He was driving her mad. Stupid, stupid pretty boy with his big, blue eyes. She cursed herself for her weakness whenever he only so much as blinked at her.

“There’s no… sweetheart to go home to either. Not anymore. But my brothers are here, nurse. I was the first one to enlist and they… they came after me. Didn’t want me to go alone I suppose. They’ll still be here if you send me home. I’d rather die the next time I go over the edge than be sent home a cripple.”

She cleared her throat and met his iron gaze again. Stupid, pretty boy.

“Call me Margaret, alright? Yarrow then. The little white petals can be used too, yes?”

-

Tommy registered her being by his bedside a lot over the following days and nights. She was treating him a little different now.  
Lots of light pats on his good shoulder, gentle strokes over his cheek, quick squeezes of his hand. It was comforting. Even he had to admit that much.  
Sometimes when he woke from a nightmare, and she had some time to spare, she’d sit down by his side and quietly read to him from the newspaper.  
The British had occupied the Sultanate of Darfur and annexed it to Egypt on the 16th of March, and Tommy dreamed of pyramids and strange horses (camels and dromedaries are just strange horses to Tommy alright).  
Portugal had entered war on the 9th of March, and he dreamed of so many soldiers by their side, they could overrun the Germans without any casualties. On both sides. Just boys rolling around in the dirt, trying to wriggle out of the others' grip, bursting out in laughter finally, helping each other up and admitting what a stupid, unnecessary fight all this was.

It was mostly war-related news that she told him about, but he’d ask for any headlines from home, especially Birmingham, or the results of the few races that were being held. She was happy when there was enough good stuff to tell him about, and he didn’t need to know that she left out the more gruesome headlines about the German gas-attacks, which made the men drown in their own frothy, blood-filled lungs and vomit up in Ypres.  
The reading calmed him and helped him slip back into a fitful sleep, so she kept on finding the least fear-inducing news.  
The fever still had him in a vicious grip, but it felt nice knowing that she tried her best for him, and that he seemed to like having her around.  
Stupid, pretty boy, but she had started to like him a lot somewhere along the way. His quiet persona, all cold glares and frowns, and then the sleep-talking in a strange language that she had not yet dared to ask him about.

Tommy was alright with her doting on him, since he felt that no one, not even his family, had really liked him since the war and since Greta. And now he didn’t even have Freddie… At least his nurse didn’t think he was a horrible person, just “a bit of a pain in the ass”. She had not so reluctantly told him that only last night, when he had forced her to read out the winning horses of the Gatwick race not once but twice at about 2am in the morning. He had warmed up to her too since he knew her name.

On the eighth day of their secret routine of treating the infected wound with a paste of yarrow, she seemed in a better mood than usually. She looked like she had trouble not cheering out loud when she told him it was starting to look much better.

“You could’ve come up with this earlier, Thomas,” she mocked him, relief flooding her features. “Would’ve saved me a few sleepless nights of reading ridiculous race horse names to you.”  
She also told him John was doing better and better and had asked to see him.

25TH MARCH 1916 [URGENCY CASES HOSPITAL; LE FAUX MIROIR NEAR RÉVIGNY SUR ORNAIN]

“Oi, Tommy boy!” John’s voice boomed through the air as soon as he had spotted his brother’s bed on the far end of the tent. “You look like shit!”

Still not broken the slightest bit then. Tommy smiled at his younger brother when he approached. His walk was about as steady as a toddlers and he’d lost weight he couldn’t really afford to lose, like Tommy guessed he himself would have too. But he looked good. Better than most of the men in this miserable tent.

“So they forced that horrible, fucking haircut on you as well?” John asked through a big grin, sinking down in the chair Margaret had put beside Tommy’s bed for him. “Thank God it suits me at least. Have you seen yourself, Tom?”

Tommy couldn’t help but snort a laugh at that. John’s hair was shorn down to stubble on his sides and back as well, and his top hair was a lot shorter than Tommy’s rather long locks, leaving nothing but an almost comical circle of hair.

“You remember that one time Arthur cut our hair?” Tommy chuckled, pushing up on his right arm to maneuver himself into a more upright position. Margaret was about to come over and help him, but he waved her off. Enough of the fussing over him, at least in front of John.

“Man, I was what? Maybe three? I only remember it from your stories!”

“Mum started crying when she saw us,” Tommy laughed. “Then fuckin’ Arthur cried too of course, and you were so unbothered by all of it, Polly had to try so hard to keep from laughing out loud when she saw that mum was seriously out of her mind over her boys being mostly bald. We wore hats well into Spring that year.”

“Well at least we had no nits then and warm ears,” John giggled. “S’ fucking cold at night! It’s getting better now but the first few nights I told the nurses that I would cut them, if I got a cold because of an ‘aircut.”

“When are you getting out of here, John?” Tommy changed the topic. The mood dropped almost instantly and John’s face became serious for the first time that afternoon. Tommy registered the low sound of battle behind the tent's canvas walls again.

“Dunno… In a week maybe. But I know they won’t send us back to Verdun, Tommy. Arthur and the boys have been relocated already. Freddie dropped by some nights ago, telling me they were being loaded on a train to go back to Amiens. Our generals say Verdun is a lost cause, but the French are still pissed with us. Say that we always hide behind them, don’t take on enough responsibility in holding the lines blabla… Baguette-munching fuckers. We’ve got enough on… Have you heard about Ypres?”

Tommy hadn’t. Margaret was close enough to hear he would now. She shot him looks there and then from the corner of her eye.

“- they say it even sinks down into the tunnels really quickly and if they’re not fast enough with their masks… It’s fucking madness, Tommy.”

The bloodstained jacket he had arrived in had labelled him a tunneller, even though the bullet had slightly distorted the shape of the bold, black ‘T’ on his shoulder.  
She forced herself to look away and focus again on splinting a soldier’s broken arm.  
She was going to be the one to decide when he was fit for service again.  
She would have to send him out there again, when he could be on his way home by now, but for them both being as stubborn as mules in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats on making it all the way down here!
> 
> I hope this chapter wasn't /too much/...  
Next chapter is going to take us closer to the Battle of the Somme, but I kinda don't want to write off Margaret and her crush on Tommy just yet... So maybe there will be some sort of goodbye scene...?
> 
> Did you like the flashback? I haven't done one in a while and now I'm not sure if I should do them in future chapters?  
Tell me what you think!


	13. Red lips are not so red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As expected, I couldn't resist throwing Margaret in for another chapter... and some horses as well because it's Tommy, you know? The man needs horses for his sanity's sake. And cigarettes. Definitely needs cigarettes...
> 
> There's some new characters in this too, a bottle of rum, a too long walk, and a brotherly reunion!  
Hope you enjoy!
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Wilfred Owen's poem “Greater Love”]

14TH APRIL 1916 [URGENCY CASES HOSPITAL; LE FAUX MIROIR NEAR RÉVIGNY SUR ORNAIN]

Within three weeks, things had changed drastically in the field hospital. The trench fever epidemic had died down, and men were discharged more quickly than any of the nurses liked. French Captains did rounds, looking for men who were ‘only’ suffering from shell shock. Unwounded and good enough to be fed to the ‘Meat Grinder’, as everyone had started to call the Battle of Verdun.  
There were no more British soldiers brought, since they had all been relocated, and after John was discharged, Tommy was the only Englishman left.  
Most of the nurses at Le Faux Miroir were British though, and whenever the French came to take one of the shaking, crying men away, they had trouble communicating with them. Tommy suspected the French to feign the whole not understanding a word of English though.

His routine had changed as well. Instead of soup, Margaret had started to bring him more solid food to get his body to build up some strength again, and she made him a cup of tea with either milk or sugar (sometimes both) whenever he wanted and granted there were enough supplies.  
He wasn’t on pain relievers anymore most of the time, and the wound in his shoulder was healing well. The stitches had come out a while ago, and Margaret made sure to smother the scar in ointment every night, so the skin would keep its elasticity. It was nice having his back rubbed, but he made sure to give a pained groan once or twice, so she wouldn’t know he actually enjoyed it. She performed the same procedure on the more slowly healing wound in his thigh too, but Tommy didn’t need to fake the pained noises when she touched him there.  
She made him get up whenever there was enough time too now. Get him used to walking again. Hopefully on his own rather sooner than later, Tommy thought when he literally hung between Margaret and that other nurse, Ellie, for the first few tries. His legs had become skinny, on the verge of being useless due to loss of muscle over the time he’d been bedridden, and his mood was considerably dark when he didn’t make much progress in the first few days of trying to walk.

“Alright, Thomas, up we go,” Margaret chirped one quiet morning in April, approaching his bed. Where did she get all the energy from? She still didn’t sleep as far as Tommy knew. “C’mon.”

“Where’s the other one?” Tommy grumbled, not moving an inch.

“You know her name,” Margaret rebuked him, pulling his blanket away.

“I don’t care for her name,” Tommy spit, when the cold morning air seeped into his bones. He wanted the blanket back. How dare she?

“What an honour it is that you make the effort to remember mine then,” Margaret mocked him. “We don’t need Ellie anymore today. Up you go.”

“No.”

It was meant to sound definite, not… whatever it did sound like. Margaret looked at him, seeing right through the childish behaviour apparently.

“Are you scared of falling?” she asked, sounding a little too genuine and pitiful for Tommy’s taste.

“No.”

“I won’t let you fall down, Thomas,” she went on anyways, the slightly mocking smile back on her face. “I promise.”  
Her dimples got impossibly deeper at that, and Tommy felt a blush creep onto his cheeks. This was humiliating.  
He swat her arms away when she grabbed for his hands.

“I’ll get you a pack of cigarettes if you try.”

Now that was just a fucking bribe, wasn’t it?

“You’ve been asking for fags since you could form coherent sentences again. More or less. I think I heard you ask for them in your sleep once,” she winked at him. He glared back.

“This is blackmail,” he grumbled, but lo and behold, Thomas Shelby slowly sat up in bed. “I want two packs.”

He had swung his legs over the edge and was staring her right in the eyes, looking very serious, but she could tell from the spark in his eyes that he was trying to hold back a smile.

“Oh, now we’re talking,” she gave back, raising her eyebrows at him. “When did I say this was negotiable?”

“Two legs, two packs of cigarettes. S’ a good sentiment,” he couldn’t hold back the grin anymore. Finally. He looked bloody handsome when he smiled.

“Alright, alright. I will get you two packs… if you manage to walk over to the lavatories with me.”

He looked straight out shocked at that, eyes darting from the lavatories on the far end of the tent back to her. The woman was mad. He’d not managed half this way with two nurses supporting him last time.

“Want me to be so exhausted I can’t hold up me cigarette anymore after my triumph?” he asked, swallowing around the dryness in his throat. She was right, he was fucking scared of falling. Embarrassing and all in front of the other boys. There was no backing away now though.

“You won’t fall,” she whispered once again, just for him to hear when she helped him up. She’d better be right. He grabbed onto her offered arms, and tried to not think about how fucking far away the lavatories were.  
His knees felt wobbly from the first step on, and he felt the hot blush colour his cheeks again when he thought about how clumsy he must look. The floor felt cold under his feet, and he had to resist the urge to curl his toes inward whenever they stopped for a moment.

“You’re doing good,” she told him quietly, squeezing his forearms. “Try pushing the heel of your bad leg down on the floor a little more. You’re walking on your tiptoes.”

He tried and it worked a lot better like that. His thigh still hurt when he put pressure on the leg, but it was bearable. Tommy didn’t realize he’d done it, until she pushed him down on the bench beside the door to the loo. She dropped down beside him, letting out a relieved sigh.

“You didn’t think I’d really make it,” Tommy panted accusingly, leaning back against the thin, wooden wall. He’d bathe in his victory some more once he could breathe normally again.

“Now I’ll have to get hold of two packs of cigarettes somehow,” she sighed deeply beside him, eyes locked on a spot in the distance. Tommy lifted his head off the wall again, staring at her in disbelief.

“... You mean you don’t actually have them-”

She started laughing.

“You should see your face, Thomas,” she giggled, patting his knee. “But it’s good to know how to get you to do anything. And I will get you your cigarettes. I keep my promises.”

He leaned back again. Her hand stayed on his knee.

“Will you make me walk back again too?” he asked slowly after a while.

“Unless you want me to carry you back over to your bed… yes.”

“... I’m heavier than I look.”

She started laughing again at that.  
After a successful retreat, followed by collapsing into the bedsheets, Tommy was so exhausted he slept through lunch, but by the time dinner was served, he was up again, and she placed a tray with two packs of cigarettes beside the food on his lap.

28TH APRIL 1916 [URGENCY CASES HOSPITAL; LE FAUX MIROIR NEAR RÉVIGNY SUR ORNAIN]

Tommy shivered under the covers, when he read about the latest gas attacks on British soldiers. It made sense now that Margaret had only reluctantly handed over the newspaper earlier. A place called Hulluch, a small village north or Arras, had been hit and the British had suffered uncountable casualties. The 16th Irish Division and part of the 15th Scottish Division had been hit worst, and Tommy could only imagine how this would further fuel the Irish fight for freedom from Britain. The Easter Rising had only just begun four days ago, and many believed the Irish would not stop until they were finally free. The fact that the many casualties were unjustly blamed on the men’s “poor gas discipline”, using their masks wrongly and so on, probably didn’t help the outrage. Tommy knew the masks were shit. He had seen the French carry a much better model.

Margaret appeared beside his bed and placed down a neatly folded pack of clothing on his bedside table. She had even repaired the messed up ‘T’ on his uniform jacket for him. He looked at her and missed her smile already.  
“Thanks.”

She nodded and left without a word. He hoped she would be back for when he’d leave tomorrow morning.  
She was back much sooner than he’d thought, not wearing her grey dress and the white nurse’s apron, but a casual green dress.

“I… I’ve got the afternoon off and I thought…” she stumbled over her words and wrung her hands in the dress, before she got herself together over his stupid grin. She wasn’t normally shy around him and he seemed to notice. Maybe it was a little different now that he didn’t really need her anymore. He seemed much more grown up somehow, more collected and serious. She pushed the thoughts away.  
“The weather’s so nice outside and I wanna show you something.”

“Alright,” Tommy grinned. “I happen to have the afternoon off too so… Why not?”  
He got up, reached for his uniform trousers and suspender and started putting them on.  
She shook her head at him, but the smile found its way back onto her face.  
Still her stupid, pretty boy after all.

“Fuck, there’s enough room for another man in these,” Tommy remarked under his breath, stuffing his undershirt into the waistband and securing the much too wide trousers with the suspenders. Margaret hummed a sound of agreement. She hoped he’d get enough food wherever he’d be deployed to. She couldn’t bare to think about the beautiful face of his all hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes again, dirt-crusted and deathly pale underneath from the lack of sun in the tunnels. She was almost glad she probably would never know.

“Hurry up, will you?” she pushed him and turned around, heading for the exit.  
He quickly pulled on the shoes she had brought, and got up to follow her towards the front of the tent.  
He hadn’t been outside this microcosm for so long.  
The air outside was warm and smelled of wet grass, which made for a welcome change to the dry, stuffy air inside the tent. She seemed to relax too, a little more with every breath, sunshine on both their pale faces, and she even grabbed his hand once they were out of sight.  
Still the lively, cheeky girl after all then, but her hand felt a little clammy and cold in his own for the first time.

She led him to a field close to a little forest, which seemed to have been spared from the fighting, as well as the need for firewood during the winter. On the meadow stood about twenty horses.

“One of the fillies had a foal three days ago,” Margaret told him when they walked a little closer. She wasn’t surprised at all, when the little horse stalked towards Tommy fearlessly right away, its mother hot on its heels. The filly calmed down quickly though, nudging her nose into his open hand too.  
He was talking quietly to them, but Margaret couldn’t understand the words.  
When she stepped closer the foal shied away immediately, and Tommy sat down in the grass, where she joined him.

“You talked in that same language in your sleep sometimes,” she started, somehow unsure if she should be asking him about it at all. He stayed quiet.

“It sounds nice,” she added after a while.

“It’s Romani,” he admitted and started plucking at some of the grass around him. Why did it always have to feel like admitting to a weakness?

“I wish I had grown up with more than one language,” she sighed and thought about a way to change the topic. She understood why this would bother him. Gypsies were not exactly the favourites of all the posh and “proper” English. She wondered if he had enlisted to prove a point. Then again, she would’ve never guessed he had Gypsy heritage if he hadn’t just told her.  
“You really do have a way with horses. I’m impressed.”

“Pff,” he huffed, stretching his healing leg carefully. The trouser leg bunched up around his white ankle, and Margaret felt a nervous feeling creep up inside her stomach again.  
Why was being around him awkward suddenly?  
Why couldn’t it feel as normal as it had felt every single day, all these weeks he had been here.  
Tommy fished for the pack of cigarettes he had naturally remembered to bring. He lit one, took a few drags, before he offered it to her wordlessly.  
She took it, even though she hadn’t smoked once in all her life.  
It couldn’t be all that hard, right?

Hearing his laughter, after her coughing had subsided made the horrible, burning sensation all worth it.

“Knew you don’t smoke,” Tommy chuckled, snatching the cigarette from where it still rested clumsily between her fingers. “Nobody who smokes wrinkles their nose like you do, whenever you only as much as see a cigarette.”

It was her turn to huff now and she boxed him in the shoulder. Very lightly. It was the one that had been injured after all. He looked at her, then at his shoulder.

“‘S’ that all you got?” he asked unimpressed. “I’ve seen you wrestle panicked men back into their beds.”

He kicked at her leg playfully. She took it. He kicked her again.

“Men twice my size.” And again.

That smug grin in his face, cigarette dangling from his plush, pink lips.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

Where was he trying to go with this? Margaret knew she’d mess it up if she asked him.  
He put out his cigarette. A challenging grin followed, then another kick.

“You are a very foolish man, Thomas Shelby,” she finally burst, grabbing his upper arms and pushing him back into the grass. Well, almost.  
He had become a lot stronger over the past weeks, and his arms were hard as iron under her grip. Tommy really wasn’t tall and he had the skinniest waist she’d ever seen, but working in the tunnels had given him very nice arms apparently. She thought about this a little too intently, and he easily reversed their positions, pressing her into the grass instead.

“That I am indeed,” he said, and just when her brain was trying to figure out what the undercurrent of his words had been, his lips were on hers.

Don’t get attached.

They had told her that when she had come to France as a war nurse.  
Never get attached to the boys.  
Because you’ll most likely never see them again. Or see them torn to shreds, blown to bits and pieces.  
She’d rather never ever see Tommy again.

His hands were roaming the skin beneath her dress, and hers were pulling down his suspenders.

She hoped he’d survive whatever the war had yet in store for him.

His soft undershirt rode up over his taut stomach, and she wanted it gone. He let her pull it over his head without objection. Her hands trailed the freckles on his arms for a moment, before it was his turn to want some more fabric gone.

Maybe he would try to find her after all this. Birmingham wasn’t too far from London, and she already knew that she wouldn’t return home with the man she had followed to France. She would be returning to London alone.

He carefully lifted her dress over her head and discarded it on the collecting pile of clothing beside them.  
She felt naked beneath him in just her brassiere and panties for a moment, but he was shuffling out of his trousers before the feeling could grow.

When her hands touched him, he realized he hadn’t been touched there since Greta. Except those two or three times. But he paid Lizzie, so it was different.  
He leaned down to kiss her again, his right hand cupping her cheek gently. The cold metal of the ring around his pinky grazed her earlobe and her skin broke out in goosebumps.

She found herself wondering, while he was inside of her, if he only needed this to mark the end of his recovery period. Revive his manhood.  
Or if he maybe, just maybe, liked her too.  
Her hand palmed the smooth, freshly shorn back of his head.  
It didn’t matter though, did it?

His mouth was agape in silent pleasure when he came inside of her, and with her hand tangled in his locks, she pulled his face down once more, not ready to have kissed his lips for the last time just yet.  
He was glad he was apparently not the only one feeling good about this. He made a mental note to ask her for her last name before he left tomorrow. Maybe he could write to her too.

It didn’t matter. Deep inside, she knew he wouldn’t come for her if he were to survive. She knew him well enough by now she thought. But if she’d stay a memory than that would be good enough.  
She also knew, if he should have left something inside of her, she wouldn’t be able to get rid of it. Not for the possibility of it having those same blue, big eyes.  
Maybe he’d leave her with a living memory like that.

“No sweetheart waiting for you either then, I guess,” Tommy whispered when he had laid down beside her in the grass afterwards. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, but he managed to not make it sound hurtful.  
He still felt bad about saying it like that though, after doing what they’d just done. He should’ve asked her sooner if there was someone or not. If there had been someone.

“Not anymore either,” she answered, and reached for her clothes to get dressed.  
Tommy hoped he hadn’t pushed her away with his words.  
But really, it didn’t matter anymore now, did it?

29TH APRIL 1916 [EN ROUTE TO AMIENS]

The train plowed through the French hills and fields, steadily putting miles between Tommy and Verdun. The rattling motion made him sleepy, but he had slept too much those past weeks. He wished his brothers would be on the train with him at least, because he had felt lonely and a little lost from the moment he had stepped into the uniform-crowded station at Révigny sur Ornain. Boarding the train, he had considered just slumping down in the hallway beside the compartments once again, but decided against it in the end. The train was not nearly full yet, although more and more soldiers got on with every stop it took.  
Tommy had shared a compartment with just one sleeping French soldier at first, but by now there were three more men sat in it. British soldiers, who had boarded the train in Reims.  
Having been fortunate enough to get a seat by the window, he tried to ignore the men’s conversation and the soft snoring of the still fast asleep other soldier and continued staring at the passing landscape.

“Don’t come back. Take care.”

That was all she’d told him this morning, tears in her eyes, and he had understood that she meant he shouldn’t try to see a field hospital from the inside ever again, but it had still hurt to hear those words from his closest companion of late. Tommy wanted things he could come back to after… after everything was over. He had never had a lot of friends, and he had definitely started considering Margaret something of a friend. Maybe women like her just didn’t get attached to men like him. It was probably better to not get attached to men like him these days.  
His eyelids got heavier and heavier.  
He had forgotten to ask her for her last name too.

Tommy was roused from his involuntary nap that had happened somewhere along the way by the sound of quiet, arguing voices.

“Just bloody take it already, Sammy!”

“He’ll wake up, Matthew!”

“You’re a coward, Sammy! The man's sleeping like a log.”

At first Tommy suspected them to be talking about him, but when he opened his eyes a tiny bit, he saw that one of the three British soldiers was going for something inside the sleeping Frenchman’s rucksack.

“Oi! What are you doing?” Tommy thundered, and the three men flinched.

“He’s got a bottle of wine, this one,” one of them finally admitted guiltily. He looked like the youngest one of the group. “You want a share?”  
He had a boyish grin and crooked teeth, the same hay-coloured hair as the older looking man next to him.

“Leave the man alone,” Tommy grumbled and shifted in his seat. His leg felt sore because he hadn’t remembered to stretch it out before falling asleep in his usual cowering position. He couldn’t help but think of Margaret scolding him for being stupid and forgetting what was good for him so soon.

“And who are you to decide that?” the older, blonde one spit. “Look away then if you don’t want a share, asshole.”

At that Tommy rose from his seat.  
He was well aware of his height. But he also knew how to look down on men twice his size. It should be logically impossible, but Tommy had mastered it.  
Besides, the other men were still seated.

“What did you just say to me?”

The blonde one got up as well, one head taller than Tommy, as expected, but the third, dark haired man’s mouth opened in shock when his eyes registered the three chevrons on the sleeve of Tommy’s uniform.  
“He’s a Sarge, Matthew! Fuck, he’s a Sergeant Major!”

The blonde man’s eyes drifted down to Tommy’s uniform, not quite able to see the insignia from his position. His brown eyes got a little wider anyways.

“Fuck ranks,” Matthew swallowed after a moment and looked Tommy in the eyes again. “I don’t report to Brummie boys half my size.”

The smile that was beginning to form on his face didn’t have time to fully flourish, for Tommy’s fist connected hard with his jaws a second later. Matthew brought his arm up too, uncontrolled and easily dodged by Tommy, who distributed another successful blow to the man’s ribs.

“I asked you a question,” Tommy hissed, and when the other man bowed due to the pain in his chest he head-butted him so hard he went flying into the compartment door backwards.  
The blonde man was still on his back, when Tommy plopped back down in his seat, fixating the other two with his ice cold gaze.  
“Anyone else in for a grapple?”

They shook their heads.

“Capable of using fucking words, are we?” Tommy roared at them, and they flinched again.

“No, Sir, Sergeant Major.”

Good boys. Tommy had difficulties to not start chuckling at his victory. He had never made any use of his rank before and he found that he quite enjoyed it actually. Even without using a razor-blade equipped cap to enforce it.

“You, get up,” he addressed the soldier still lying on the floor.

When he didn’t and the other two made no move to help him either, Tommy got up with a sigh and offered him his hand. His offer was taken, and Matthew didn’t even need an invitation to give the apology he owed.

“Forgive me, Sir, Sergeant Major. I shouldn’t have… “

“- doubted a man shorter than yourself,” Tommy finished for him and sat back down. He reached for his own rucksack and produced a bottle of rum from it. Tunnellers were the fortunate ones when it came to alcohol rations, but Tommy wasn’t too much into rum, so he always kept his bottles to swap for something more to his liking with another soldier or at a tavern if he should pass one.  
He offered the bottle to the blonde man, who was still standing awkwardly in the middle of of the compartment, bleeding from the corner of his mouth.

-

“No way, man! No way!”

Tommy nodded.

“You were at La Boiselle. Fuck me. I think every regiment heard about that disaster and the rumour that three lads got away with their lives because they dug themselves out,” Sammy took another swig from the bottle. “Fuck, man! You’re a hero!”

“Did you volunteer?” Matthew asked and accepted the bottle when his younger brother handed it over. “For the tunnels I mean? You’re quite young to be one of the professionals they gathered for the tunnelling companies in the beginning.”

“Yeah, I volunteered,” Tommy answered and grabbed the offered bottle. He hated rum for making him so talkative.

“I couldn’t do it,” the third man, Richard, whispered. He had barely had three gulps of rum so far and was drunk already. “Couldn’t do it. All day in the fucking darkness.”

“So you got promoted Sergeant Major after La Boiselle?” Sammy asked.

“No, got voted for Sarge after the battle of Mons,” Tommy answered truthfully and stared at the French guy again. He was still bloody sleeping.  
His words were followed by a brief moment of silence.

“You were present at Mons?” Matthew asked unbelieving.

“Yup,” Tommy hiccuped.

“Mons was… That was in 1914, yeah? First battle our army ever fought-”

He was interrupted by the train coming to a sudden, screeching halt.  
A few minutes later a train conductor showed up in the hallway, opening one compartment door after the other, telling the men to grab their stuff and get out of the train.

“What the fuck?” Sammy cursed, clumsily putting his rucksack back on. “We’re just outside Paris. Train’s meant to go all the way to Amiens.”

Tommy kicked the sleeping Frenchman in the shin on his way out, motioning him with his head to follow them.

Outside the soldiers were told that there was a problem on the tracks that would take days to fix. A zeppelin air raid over Paris in the early morning hours had heavily affected the train tracks, and their transport to Amiens would be continued by trucks waiting at the Gare de l’Est. They’d have to walk the remaining way on foot. A crowd of about 300 men sighed at that announcement, and Tommy felt an anxious feeling settle in his stomach, outweighing the calming tipsiness.  
He had no idea how far away the Gare de l’Est still was from their current position and the longest walk he had taken so far had been the five minute stroll to the horses with Margaret the previous day.

-

Walking had been surprisingly alright for as long as they had trotted in the soft grass beside the tracks, smoke curling almost constantly around Tommy, but once they reached the cobblestone streets of Paris after about two hours, he felt his strength leave him gradually. He tried to distract himself by marveling at the most beautiful and high houses he had ever seen, but with every step the straps of his rucksack cut more into his shoulders, rubbing uncomfortably at the scar in his left one, and reminding him that every muscle in his body seemed to be on fire. He had started dragging his leg just a little at first, but after another 30 minutes he was obviously limping and had trouble keeping up.

“You alright, Sarge?” Sammy asked worriedly, waiting for Tommy to catch up.

“Yeah,” Tommy huffed under his breath.

“You’re limping, man,” Matthew now stated the obvious. “C’mon, pass your bag.”

“M’ fine,” Tommy insisted, but the other men wouldn’t have it and pulled it off his shoulders.

He managed another half hour without the weight of his backpack relatively well, and when he was slowing down again, Richard and Sammy each put one of his arms around their shoulders wordlessly, helping him keep up with their pace.

After a little less than four hours, they finally reached the Gare de l’Est, where French women were handing out drinks and sandwiches for the soldiers before they were loaded into the waiting cattle trucks.

“Thanks,” Tommy mumbled when they were all sat in one of the trucks, and Matthew put his rucksack down beside him.

“Thank you for the rum,” the man grinned, Tommy’s bottle already in his hands again.

29TH APRIL 1916 [GARE D’AMIENS]

Tommy had slept through the majority of the wobbly journey, squeezed in snug between Sammy and another British soldier. Another two swigs of rum had worked wonders for his sore muscles as well.

In Amiens, they were unloaded in the square before the train station, and Tommy rummaged through his rucksack once more before saying goodbye to the three men.

“So you don’t have to try stealing from the French again,” he grinned, producing another bottle of rum from it.

“Not sure I deserve it, Sarge, but thanks,” Matthew chuckled and accepted the bottle.

“Oh, you already got what you deserved, Matthew,” Richard laughed and gave the other man a playful fist to the shoulder.  
Sammy clumsily saluted Tommy and promised he wouldn’t let Matthew drink the rum all on his own.  
They wished each other luck, bid their farewells and barely a minute later, Tommy registered someone calling his name.

“Tommy!”

He let his eyes scan the crowded square.

“Over here, Tommy boy,” John’s voice came from behind him, and when Tommy turned around he saw Arthur, John and Jeremiah approach him.

“Fuck off, John,” Tommy smiled when his younger brother first ruffled his hair and then pulled him in a hug.

“Fresh cut, eh?” John chuckled. “At least I’m not alone with that fuckin’ ‘aircut anymore now. Freddie and the boys won’t stop teasing me.”

“Danny is the only one who will get away, but the others will get one done themselves soon enough,” Tommy grinned. “Heard that some Captains are making it compulsory because of the lice problem.”

Arthur was crying when he pulled Tommy into a tight embrace, and Tommy felt embarrassed in front of the other soldiers on the square, who didn’t care at all though.

“S’ alright, brother,” he mumbled into the hug. “I’m fine.”

“Thought you… I thought you’d die, Tom,” Arthur sniffled and Tommy pushed him away.

“I didn’t though, Arthur, did I? And now get yourself together, man.”  
He shoved at Arthur’s shoulder, trying to put on a smile. Arthur looked… absolutely dreadful. Skin greyish pale, sunken cheeks, and his moustache shabby and unclean. He reeked of alcohol.  
Jeremiah was the last to greet Tommy, nodding at him with a smile.

“Good to see you, Thomas.”

He grabbed Tommy’s hand then, placing a small, smooth object in it.

“I kept this for you. May it bring you luck now.”

In his hand, Tommy found a golden German 9mm bullet.

“S’ the one from your shoulder,” Arthur explained, having calmed down more or less again. “Jeremiah here prayed for you every night in the beginning with that bullet in his hands. First bullet’s a lucky charm if you survive it, even grandfather always said so.”

Tommy closed his hand around the bullet, feeling the cool surface against the palm of his hand. He shoved it into the pocket of his trousers after a moment.

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there!  
As always I want to ask you if you liked this chapter and tell you that comments keep me alive and productive so.... just saying ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	14. As the stained stones kissed by the English dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while and I'm sorry... This chapter had me struggling a lot but here it comes.
> 
> It will deal with the first day of the Somme, and has some opium pipes, shell-shocked Dannies, uncharacteristically huggable Tommies, and hand-holding Freddies in it too.  
But there's a lot of tension in this as well, so be warned.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from Wilfred Owen's poem "Greater Love"]

10TH JUNE 1916 [NEAR FRICOURT, DEPARTEMENT SOMME]

The familiarity of the work was the only comfort Tommy got these days.  
He had been rejoined with his old team, Danny and Freddie, weeks ago, and the latter still wouldn’t talk to him.  
They were back underneath the Somme, close to where the tunnel collapse had happened, and you could almost smell the approaching battle in the air. The men above ground were stiff and as prepared as they would ever be for when the whistles blew, and the men underground worked a relentless cycle to dig for as much of an advantage over the Germans as they could get.  
Tommy sometimes worked two shifts in a row, joining any team that had a use for him. He couldn’t sleep anyways.  
When he wasn't working, he’d try to find Arthur, who was assigned to oversee the preparation of the trenches, and talk to him. Ask him if there was any news concerning the German approach or if the battle up in Ypres was still going. John was up there again, even though he had asked to stay with his brothers. Now the Battle of Mont Sorrel had been going for 6 days and nights already. No word from John so far, Arthur would tell Tommy every day. That was, if Tommy found him before nightfall, and Arthur therefore wasn’t entirely drunk yet.

At the beginning of the war, the higher ranking generals and captains had decided to cut the amount of alcohol the soldiers received because the Prime Minister had said “We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink; and as far as I can see, the greatest of these deadly foes is drink.”  
But by now rum was the solution for almost everything at the front: Treating shell-shocked soldiers, using it as a substitute for the shortness of pain relievers, doctors even treated the flu by filling up feverish, coughing soldiers with rum until they passed out.  
Tommy did drink too, if only to ease the shaking of his hands, but with every day the alcohol helped a little less with that and he was still not willing to drink himself stupid first and to sleep second.  
So he stayed awake, after Arthur had passed out somewhere, Freddie and Danny asleep in their tent, and he wandered around, dragging clouds of smoke behind him through the deep blue nights of Summer.  
He wrote his letters at night, soft candlelight giving the paper an orange colour, and when he sealed them and stuffed them in the back pocket of his trousers to drop them by the post office at first light, he hoped he’d get an answer soon.

When he wasn’t scared or nervous for the things ahead, he was bored to near death. Every day was the same, and Tommy didn’t try to make the nights any different either.  
It must’ve been around two in the morning, when he sat outside the camp in the dry grass again, the only horse in a 5 mile radius grazing beside him. Captain Hance had once jokingly said that as the captain of a bunch of tunnelers he had as much use for a horse, as a fish had for a bicycle.  
It was more of a token, a Captain’s holy regalia, to own a horse in the war. This one had become Tommy’s secret nightly companion. That night he contemplated trying the stallion for a quick ride for the first time.

“Still up, Shelby?”

He was glad he had decided against it, when the Captain suddenly stood behind him.  
Tommy wanted to rise to his feet, but Hance waved him off and sat down in the grass beside him.

“Sleepless night, yes?”

“Yes, Sir,” Tommy replied quietly, offering him a cigarette, which the Captain took.

“Got those often?”

Tommy remained quiet and lit a match for his superior’s cigarette.

“See you sitting out here every other night,” Hance continued, puffing out a cloud of smoke. “And don’t tell me the work doesn’t tire you out, Shelby, because I know how it is.”

Tommy brought his own fag up to his lips with shaky fingers and took a deep drag.

“Can’t sleep,” he finally answered. Captain Hance beside him nodded knowingly. They smoked quietly for a while, until Hance snipped his cigarette away, and got up.

“Come on.”

It sounded like an order, and Tommy scrambled to his feet to follow. When they reached the Captain’s tent, he had to repeat the order, for Tommy found himself unable to step inside the private place. Hance opened a wooden box and produced a strange looking, wooden pipe from it. From a smaller container he retrieved a small amount of doughy, brown substance, which he rolled between his fingers before placing it on the small hole in the pipe.

“Ever smoked opium?” he asked Tommy, who shook his head. Hance pat the spot on the bed beside him. “Come here, Shelby.”  
Tommy obeyed him like a schoolboy would his teacher and sat down.  
“One drag. S’all you need to get a good night’s sleep, so don’t overdo it. You won’t feel too good tomorrow but I bet you feel miserable now so, here you go,” he passed Tommy the pipe and held out the candle for him.

The smoke filled Tommy’s lungs and seemed to stream into every inch of his body. His movements were slow when he handed Captain Hance the pipe back and his vision was blurry. A hand on his shoulder pushed him down on the bed. He wanted to protest but his eyes dropped and blackness had never felt softer or warmer.

-

He woke up with a headache and embarrassment settled deep in his stomach when he realised he was still in his Captain’s tent. He was alone, but the wooden box and a note lay beside him on the bed.

‘Keep it. We all need to sleep at night, Shelby. Or we’ll not wake up very soon. Cap. H. Hance’

Tommy grabbed the box and hurried to get out of the tent. He’d have to find a good hiding place for it.

30TH JUNE 1916 [FRONT LINE TRENCH; FRICOURT]

Tommy, Danny and Freddie hadn’t even had time to clean the dirt of the tunnels from their faces. The urgency in their Captain’s voice had not allowed it.

“Boys, get your asses above ground! Important announcements to be made. I don’t know myself what the hell is going on so you better listen for yourselves.”

Now they stood crammed together in the trench in the sweltering midday sun, listening to the bellowing voice of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the BEF on the Western Front and also a man of royal standing.

“The Battle of the Boar's Head was only the beginning! Now we strike back! Now is the time we show the Germans how the British fight! Tomorrow morning, we will launch our first attack, and all of you - All of you! Will be going over the top for the sake of our nation, for our British dignity and pride, for our good King’s sake, and for the welfare of your own people! At dawn we attack. There will be three waves. Your own superiors will be notified of your positions in a briefing shortly. Now our time has come, soldiers! God save our King, and may he be with us tomorrow!”

‘With us’ was a funny wording if one thought about it. The Earl himself would not be in need of any luck tomorrow. He’d be far away from the heat of battle, observing the gruesome scene with a binocular from a safe spot far away. Tommy balled his shaking hands into fists and shoved them into his pockets. Danny beside him had started to rock back and forth, wringing his hat between his tense hands. Freddie’s eyes were empty, and Arthur combed his hands through the long strands of hair on top of his head.  
Tommy had been right, a few weeks after he had rejoined his brothers and friends, the haircut had become compulsory. Arthur looked even worse than John. Or maybe Arthur just looked worse no matter what haircut these days. At least there had been word from John a week ago, letting them know he was well and that things had calmed down in Ypres.

The crowd of men slowly dissolved, intercepted by Captains and Commanders swimming against the stream of retreating soldiers to get to the high-commander’s dugout.

“A-and now we just go back to work?” Danny stuttered as they approached the entrance of their tunnel. “Just like that? Fuck. Fuck! We… we’re going die tomorrow and now they just send us back down to do the same old shit we have been doing for weeks? That’s going to be my last few fucking hours on earth?”

He didn’t get an answer but every man who had heard him felt the same way. Tomorrow night, a lot of them would be gone. Just like that. Just because an old Earl had decided it would be that way.

-

“They can’t send all of us, Captain, can they?”

“Who’s gonna do the work in the tunnels? We’re not nearly as far as we wanted to get!”

“Do they want you to place the explosives yourself, Sir? Because if we are all dead, who’s gonna do it?”

“They can’t send all of us!”

The men were yelling as soon as Captain Hance climbed onto his stage; a huge rock close to where the old W-shaft had been. The sun was slowly sinking, and a cool breeze brought relief to the men’s sweaty bodies and faces. If the warmth had even been the reason for all those damp shirts that day was unclear though.  
He knew there were questions that needed to be answered, and he had spent the past few hours of the afternoon trying to get those answers from the high command of the BEF. Every single Captain had tried to ascertain what the orders for the next day meant for his own men.

“Silence, soldiers!” he thundered over the babbling sea of men. “I will answer all of your questions but we will do it in a civilised way! Raise your hands and I will let you speak after one another.”

Hance answered question after question, until the one, crucial question was posed.

“But Sir, how will you decide who of us goes into battle tomorrow?”

Every single one of his tunnelers stood completely still and silent in front of him. They looked like they dared not to breathe. As if he might choose whoever moved first.  
The Captain sighed deeply before he spoke.  
“I have received orders for this matter. Only the men that joined us later than June last year. The men that have not been tunnelers for over a year yet will be sent into battle tomorrow.”

He could see the wheels churning in their heads, most of the volunteers had joined over the course of the Summer 1915. Some of them in June, but the bigger portion in the months of July and August. Some of the faces had relaxed visibly at his announcement. Especially the older ones, the ones that had been underground since the very beginning. Most of the faces sank though and hissed curses cut through the air.  
Hance proceeded to tell them they would be split up, some of them going with the second wave, the rest of them with the third. Small mercies at least; not in the first wave. Finally, they were all handed a brand new gadget: wire cutters that could be fitted to the front of their rifles.  
The crowd started to slowly dissolve after that, mumbled conversations about getting wasted one last time tonight.

“No, no, no, no-”

Danny had started getting that faraway look in his eyes again. Freddie put a hand on his shoulder.

“We- we can’t go… We can’t go- We’ll just stay in the tunnels. Go to work like every day tomorrow and they won’t… won’t notice it- won’t notice it-”

Tommy stepped in front of Danny, patting him roughly on the cheek.  
“Oi, Danny. They have lists with our names and the dates we joined them. We joined in fucking August last year, Danny. We’ll go over the edge tomorrow, you hear me?”

Danny was still shaking his head frantically, eyes trained on the ground.

“Danny, you hear me?” Tommy roared into his face.

“Stop it, Tom,” Freddie barked at him from behind Danny’s shoulder.

“Stop what, Freddie?” Tommy spit back. “What do you want me to tell him, eh? That it’s all gonna be alright? Fucking fine?" He focused on Danny again. "Do you still know how to hold a rifle, Danny? Cause that would bloody help tomorrow, you know!”

“Shut up, Tommy! You’re not helping!”

“You shut the fuck up, Freddie! Now you can suddenly talk to me? Better go on being fucking mute around me- saves us both the trouble of pretending to care about each other!”

He was hurt alright. Freddie had ignored him for weeks, not spoken a word with him, and Tommy had even gone through with the humiliating task of trying to apologise. To no satisfying result; Freddie had just walked away wordlessly. And now the bastard was defending Danny as if Tommy was being the asshole.  
He looked hurt too though, Freddie, when Tommy had said what he’d just said.

“You’re such a bloody idiot, Tom,” was all he added before he walked away, leaving Tommy and a shivering Danny behind. Tears had started to stream down Danny’s cheeks, and Tommy put an arm around his shoulders, gently pushing him back towards the tunnels.

-

He helped Danny clean his rifle in the end, because the other man’s hands were shaking so hard, Tommy feared he might shoot them both in the head by accident. He was once again reminded how much he needed to keep occupied, take care of someone, to keep his own thoughts from spiralling, his own hands from shaking.  
Just when he was contemplating to leave a sleeping Danny alone for a while to try and find Arthur, Danny stirred, turning around to face Tommy.

“Can’t fucking sleep,” he sniffed, sitting up again, reaching for his canteen. Tommy remembered the wooden box underneath his pillow and he moved over to get a hold of it.

“Ever smoked opium, Danny?”

1ST JULY 1916 [BATTLE OF THE SOMME BEGINS]

At exactly 7.28 a.m, they were woken by a deafening crash. They had been informed of the Lochnagar mine being blown up by the remaining men of the 179th in the morning, but the actual sound of tons of explosives sending men, earth and chalk skywards was a terrible noise to be woken by. Getting up was even harder. They put on their uniforms in silence, shivers running through all their bodies. Freddie had come back at some point during the night, finding both Danny and Tommy asleep. 

By nine, they were in the trenches, looking for their company. Tommy spotted Arthur a few yards in front of them, and squeezed past the soldiers in the tight trench to get to him. In a rare moment of childish confusion and pent-up fear, he simply slung his arms around his older brother’s shoulders, pressing close. Arthur hugged him back tightly, one hand cupping Tommy’s neck, keeping him pinned for a long moment.

“When are you due?” Tommy asked quietly, still not letting go.

“First wave,” Arthur whispered, voice breaking anyways. “You?”

“Second or third,” Tommy replied. “Dunno yet.”

They didn’t wish each other good luck, Tommy just peeled himself away after another heartbeat, and walked back to where his company was slowly gathering. He didn’t turn around again. Didn't want to see Arthur looking even more broken than he did anyways these days.

-

Freddie, Danny and Tommy were told to go with the third wave, and as much as that meant they might have a better chance of coming back again too, it also meant waiting. Hours and hours and hours until the first two waves had gone over the edge. The air was warm and stuffy, the mud in the trenches drier than Tommy could ever remember it. Their uniforms were soaked with sweat by midday, just when the whistles blew for the second wave. Tommy felt an urge to try and look for Arthur, if he was back, or if he was in one of the First Aid stations, but he knew he wasn’t allowed to leave his spot.  
Food and drink was brought to the front line trench and distributed, and while Tommy greedily downed the water from the cup, he barely touched the food, like most of the other soldiers did not.  
The day stretched mercilessly, hours passing agonisingly slow, testing the men’s patience and sanity quite honestly. When the second wave came back, the remaining men, the third wave, started to get jittery. Men unable to sit still, kicking their legs out aimlessly, deep, shaky inhales shook them, and helmets were adjusted too many times, followed by sweaty foreheads being wiped again and again.  
It didn’t help that the returning soldiers shouted at them, telling them “Forget the fucking wire cutters! They won’t cut through the German wire. Those bastards have stronger steel than us. You’ll be shot trying to cut a hole into their defences.”  
After that, conversations died down, silence covered the trench like a glass dome. The only noises to be heard were birds singing high up in the sky and the never-ending rumble of dropping shells.

Freddie had started to shiver, ever so slightly, but it was hard to miss. Danny was rocking back and forth beside him, one hand raised to his mouth, biting on his already bitten-to-nothing nails and whispering scared nonsense.  
Tommy was chain-smoking, trying to ignore the nauseous feeling in his stomach. He was hot in his uniform, but his hands were ice-cold and sweaty, somehow soaking his cigarettes even. He gulped down the last bit of water from his cup, just when Captain Hance’s voice suddenly shattered the silence. It sounded like glass breaking into hundreds of pointy shards to most ears.

“STAND READY.”

In an undulating motion the men of the third wave got to their feet, rifles held closely in front of their bodies, standing stiff and half dead already.  
Tommy’s stomach cramped together, and he choked, vomiting into the government cup he was still holding. Dry retches followed and he couldn’t get to his feet. Just when panic was setting in, he felt a hand grab his own and pull him up.  
He dropped the damned cup and grabbed his rifle with his now free right hand.  
Freddie just kept holding onto his other hand, squeezing it rhythmically. Both their hands were sweaty and cold, and yet it felt like clutching a lifeline. Tommy squeezed back.  
It wasn’t an apology, not really, but it was a lot they told each other without words in that moment. It was some sort of forgiveness at least.  
After a moment, Tommy dared to look to his right, look over at Danny, who was to his surprise standing completely still, weapon held in front of him, eyes fixed ahead. He wasn’t trembling anymore.

Only when the whistles were blown, screeching like banshees in the hot afternoon air, Freddie and Tommy broke up their entwined hands, lining up to climb the ladders.

The sun shone into Tommy’s eyes the moment he reached the top, and he thought it was a beautiful day to die at least.  
He dropped to his knees, then even lower, crawling over the dusty ground until he reached their own barbed wire barriers. He had to get up now, move through one of the openings quickly enough so they wouldn’t get into a bottleneck situation. He registered shelling close the him but ignored it.  
Getting up, two bullets hit the spot where he had cowered only seconds ago, and he forced himself to move more quickly.  
Then he saw them.  
Men hanging lifelessly in the barbed wire fences, folded over, bloody uniforms fluttering in the light breeze.  
Tommy understood why some of the boys called it ‘dirty washing on the line’ now.  
He reminded himself to keep moving.  
There were screams behind him when bullets hit their target, yelps in front of him when a shell hit the first group of soldiers who had made it through the wire.  
He kept on moving forward, focused on getting through the maze of wire, finding the best spots to push through. He passed a dead man, who looked a bit like Arthur, and when he searched for leverage with his hand, wire cut into his palm, making him tear his eyes away from the body.

He had no idea where Freddie and Danny where when he had made it through the wire, he did not recognise any of the faces of the other soldiers. Their faces were a blur to him at best, even before their screams pounded in his ears and their bodies dropped to the ground beside him.  
Still he moved forward.  
He stopped for a moment, aiming at a German soldier, far away but close enough still, and shot him in the neck.  
Then back to moving forward, avoiding the shell craters, keeping his eyes trained on the barely visible drop of the ground in the distance, the German trenches.  
He aimed at a German uniform again, missed once, but hit his target second try.

The ground was not so dry anymore now, for soldiers had stepped into the muddy water that had collected in the craters, or into the puddles of their comrades’ blood.  
Tommy registered Freddie somewhere to his right, but had to tear his eyes away, when a bullet flew by close to his cheek. He could feel the wind behind it.  
The telltale, whizzing sound of a dropping shell was too fucking close suddenly, and Tommy veered off course and to his right, towards Freddie.  
He crashed into him, pushing him into one of the deeper craters, shell particles and dirt raining down on them a second later, terribly familiar.  
There was no time to stay down there though, so they scrambled to their feet again, soaked as they were now from the mud in the crater.  
Tommy’s rifle almost slipped from his hands as he climbed out, and he heard Freddie pant “You’re bleeding,” behind him.

“I’m fine,” Tommy wheezed, getting to his feet. There was no time for this.

Forward.

Tommy had trouble believing that he had made it, when he reached the German barbed wire fences. He wasn’t sure if he was hit, but as long as his body felt numb and was capable of moving forward he would continue.  
He didn’t bother with the wire cutter, but went for a hole in the fence.  
The soldier in front of him let out a throaty scream and sank to the ground. Tommy dropped down with him in a synchronised motion. ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ re-surfaced somewhere in his thoughts for a moment.  
Bad idea going for the biggest gap apparently.

He crawled over to his left, getting his hands tangled in the wire multiple times, but it didn’t matter, he’d been bleeding already before, and whenever he stayed still for a moment, the shots aimed at his direction stopped, the men probably thinking he was a dead man tangled up in the forest of iron branches.  
He made it through after a while, it could’ve been three minutes or fifty, he wasn’t able to grasp time anymore, just knew he was still alive.  


He tore one of his trouser legs to shreds, getting out underneath the wire, thorns like from a rosebush cutting into his calf, but he’d made it through.  
He rose to his feet, surprisingly steady, it astonished himself really, and joined the other men, who were already emptying their guns, shooting down into the German trench.  
Tommy had never been so close to the enemy frontline, never this far from their own trenches. His body came alive with a fresh rush of adrenaline, and his hands twitched excitedly when he grabbed onto the rifle, taking aim. It was a slippery operation considering his hands were bleeding, but he managed well enough.  
The bullets made the bodies down in the trench bounce on the ground, and Tommy and the other soldiers were still firing long after the returning bullets had stopped. Even the sound of shelling was but a weak echo in the distance.

They had won this battle, Tommy thought.  
They really had lost more men than ever before, and what had ended relatively well for him, would turn out as one of the blackest days ever in British warfare.  
He did realise his own luck to some extent, when he traipsed back through no-man’s land, drunkenly stumbling after the rush of killing.  
There were so many bodies.

Some had started to pick up the injured or their dead comrades, and carried them back behind their own lines. Others were shouting across the field of chaos and destruction, calling out the names of friends and brothers.

Tommy tripped over something, crashing face forward into the ground. His bowels twisted again, when he saw it was a mess of red flesh still stuck in a shoe. The ground underneath his hands was bloodsoaked red when he got up.

The adrenaline wore off quickly, and he felt incredibly tired as he helped carrying back wounded men.  
When he spotted Freddie and Danny, he walked towards them, tripping over his own feet this time, falling over again.  
He was so tired.  
Getting up, he looked down at his hands for the first time. His palms were a mess of tears and cuts, some of them quite deep and still pumping blood, seeping into his uniform cuffs in brownish-red streams where the blood mixed with the mud. He’d have to get them cleaned properly or they might get infected.

“Tommy,” Freddie sounded about as tired as Tommy felt. “Tom… You alright?”

Tommy didn’t know why but he grinned at his friends. They were all alive. He reminded himself that he couldn’t go to sleep tonight before he had found out where Arthur was, but right then he felt incredibly alive and relieved.

“I’m... alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope the battle scenes were not too awful...
> 
> The wire cutter disaster is a fact btw: The Brits developed wire cutters to get through enemy wire fences faster, and then their soldiers had to find out in battle that the wire cutters might've worked fine with English wire, but wouldn't cut through the much stronger German wire...
> 
> Let me know what you think!  
I am running on your comments like Tommy on alcohol and opium hnnghh.


	15. To you from failing hands we throw the torch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feasts, baths, opiate hazes and stolen horses are probably the best words to summarize this chapter.  
Even though it even has some time off for Tommy and the boys in store, I would still say this is one of the sad ones...sorry.
> 
> I wanted to put another flashback in this, but it just didn't quite work with the story, and after overthinking it for too many times, I decided to take it out and maybe throw it into a future chapter.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you're still with me and forgive me for posting this one week late!
> 
> [Chapter title taken from John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields"]

Dragging themselves back towards the camp, Tommy, Danny and Freddie saw Arthur already waiting for them at the edge of the field.  
He looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders the moment he saw all three of them.  
They returned just in time to be told that the soldiers that had served their duty in the field would get to eat early.  
Early and a lot.

“That bread is just out of the oven, I swear. It’s still fucking warm,” Danny cheered and proceeded to dig into the food.  
Even Tommy got impatient for food, one of the few times in his life really, when he just couldn’t wait to fill his belly, but Arthur was still carefully cleaning his cut up hands and wrapping them in a light layer of gauze.

“You need to take a bath tonight, Tom, you hear me?”  
Tommy was busy staring at the huge bowl of meat stew.  
“Oi, brother,” Arthur chuckled. “Don’t tell me you are that hungry?”

“...what?” Tommy replied absentmindedly, trying to ignore his painfully rumbling tummy.

“I said, you gotta get yerself a bath tonight, eh? Grab a wash basin and head over to the field hospital tents. They have hot water and soap. And take Danny and Freddie with ya. Smelly kids. When did ya last take a bath, eh Tom?”

“Are you done any time soon then, Arthur?” Tommy pressed on annoyed. Baths were not really a priority for tunnellers anyways. Wasn’t worth the effort just to come back from the tunnels the following day as dirty as before.  
But they’d be off for a week now. Some sort of reward for the men that had come back today. One whole week for themselves to decide what to do with their time. One whole week to wait for the whistles’ blow again, sending them into death’s claws once more.  
Tommy wasn’t sure if the time would pass too quickly or agonizingly slow.

“Get up then, eh,” Arthur grinned at him, bringing him back. “Dig in, Tom.”

The food was the best they’d ever eaten, or maybe they had just never been that hungry before. All of them remembered particularly bad winters back home, when whole families had starved, and yet they couldn’t remember their bellies ever feeling so hollowed out, needing to be filled.  
There was wine too for a change, entirely too sweet for their tongues, but strong enough to loosen them anyways, transforming the usually quiet camp into a lively village. Danny fell off the bench backwards at some point, giggling loudly and patting his full belly.  
The Black Country boys on the long table opposite theirs started singing songs, and Arthur convinced a tall, red headed man named Billy Kitchen to fight him. Their boxing ring consisted of a swaying ring of soldiers, and their fist fight looked more and more like a dance. Tommy had a stomach ache purely from laughing too much.

It was dark already when he trotted over to the field hospital alongside Danny and Freddy, all three of them dragging a metal washbasin behind them.

“I don’t need a bath!”

“Shut up, Danny,” Freddie grinned.

“Need to wash off the fight, Danny, that’s what we gotta do. And you don’t wanna be smelly for your week off,” Tommy threw in, stumbling slightly. He wasn’t used to wine.

After getting the hot water, sponges and bars of soap, they found a nice and quiet spot, shielded from the breeze by a supply tent and arranged their small bathtub-substitutes in a circle.

“You’re the only one who actually fits in these, Tom,” Danny mocked him with a laugh, trying to fit his own too long and bulky body comfortably inside somehow.

“Fuck off, Danny,” Tommy grinned and threw a bar of soap at him.

“Can’t fuck off now, can I? You two forced me to bathe,” Danny gave back and blocked the bar of soap with the palm of his hand. He proceeded to obediently sponge himself down and lather his skin in soapy foam, while a wine-drunk Tommy still chuckled.  
When Freddie started to disappear under a cloud of bubbles as well, he realised he himself needed to get his own soap bar back.

“Danny, pass me the soap, will ye?”

Danny just grinned.

“Oi! Danny! Give it back.”

“Why don’t you com’n get it, Tommy?”

Danny’s basin was too far away for Tommy to reach, so he’d actually have to get up and take a step to get close enough and therefore he decided splashing water at Danny was a better idea.  
Within seconds all three of them were busy splashing water at each other, only stopping when a familiar voice intercepted the gushing and laughing.

“What a bunch of idiots you are,” Arthur snorted and this time it was Tommy who had a bar of soap thrown at him.  
“Get scrubbin’, brother.”

Arthur had quickly figured all of them had forgotten fresh clothes, when they had drunkenly told him they’d get washed up now, and in a moment of brotherly compassion he had decided to carry them after Tommy and bring some fresh undershirts and trousers for Freddie and Danny too.

“Tommy, you bloody idiot! How about taking the gauze off before ya take a swim, eh?” he grumbled, when Tommy was clumsily trying to get a better grip of the slippery soap bar. Sometimes Arthur wondered why everyone thought he was the clever one.  
That same boy, who looked back at him sheepishly now, all hazey eyes and lazy smiles from too much wine.

“C’mere,” he sighed, and Tommy stretched out his hands like the good boy he had once been, so that Arthur could get the soaked bandages off.

“Now wash your hair too, yeah?” he added more quietly and tousled his brother’s damp hair playfully, which Tommy let happen without so much as a ‘fuck off’.  
Wine did strange things to him apparently.  
Arthur was just so unspeakably glad his little brother was alright.

When all three of them had dried themselves off and put on the clothes Arthur had brought, the exhaustion of the day was kicking in again and mixed with the abading haze from the booze. Tommy refused to put on his boots again, claiming it was “unnecessary effort” and shuffled back towards their tents barefoot.  
Freddie caught up with him once he had put his own boots back on and bumped his hip into Tommy’s.

“Still the barefoot kid after all, eh Tom?”

“S’ in the blood, Freddie,” Tommy slurred with a sly smile, mouth wide open in a yawn one moment later. Freddie couldn’t help but yawn as well.

“Are we good, Freddie?” Tommy asked quietly when they reached their tent and stopped him from going inside with a hand on his shoulder and eyes seemingly staring right into his core.

“Yeah,” Freddie sniffed. “This is not the place to fight amongst ourselves now, is it?”

Tommy gave a nod and disappeared inside the tent.

-

As tired as he was, Tommy found he couldn’t fall asleep, and it wasn’t for Arthur’s snoring, Freddie’s soft breathing, or Danny’s tossing and turning.  
The drifting off sensation just wouldn’t happen, no matter how much he willed his body to relax and pretended to lay in his bed at home.  
He felt like he was going mad.

After what felt like hours, he pried his eyes open again and sat up as quietly as he could, body heavy with fatigue and yet unable to give in to it. He dragged a box out from underneath a pile of his belongings.

The night air wasn’t as stuffy and hot as it had been the past few nights, but it was still warm enough for Tommy to sneak outside in just his undershirt and trousers.  
The grass was dry underneath his feet and he figured that a walk and a smoke might tire him out properly so he could finally catch some sleep.  
Lighting a cigarette took him three tries, and Tommy was glad nobody saw him. He had almost set the gauze around his hands on fire instead of the fag.

His steps carried him to the edge of the camp, towards a single tree erect in the wide fields surrounding everything. The moon was almost full and kindly shone his light down onto Tommy’s path.  
He felt like the only man awake in the whole world.  
The only man alive.  
A thought crossed his mind; he had promised Arthur to write home soon.  
Tell ‘em he was good and stuff.  
He sank down against the smooth tree trunk and fumbled with his cigarettes again. Hell, even his fingers were too tired to function properly.  
Then he changed his mind, opened the wooden box instead.  
The sequence of movements to light the opium pipe worked surprisingly smooth, and soon Tommy took a deep drag.

Stupid.

He shouldn’t do this here. He’d be in no state to walk back and find their tent.

He also didn’t care.

Another drag.  
Warmth flooded his body. Not an uncomfortable heat like a merciless summer’s day but cosy warmth, like from a slowly burning down fire on a cold winter’s day.  
His vision swam before his eyes, the sound of grass being rustled by the wind was so much louder now.  
It took some effort to raise the pipe to his lips again. Hance had told him one drag was enough.

He didn’t fucking care.

Tommy could feel his muscles melt into the ground, his heartbeat slowing down. He couldn’t move now if he wanted to. Even breathing felt unnecessary.  
One breath every now and then seemed to be enough anyways.  
If he closed his eyes now, he’d probably fall asleep.

.  
.  
.

Waking up was less easy or comfortable.  
His back ached where it pressed into the trunk, and when he lifted his head from his chest, a wave of nausea overcame him.  
When Tommy opened his eyes and the morning sun shone directly into them, he just about managed to not vomit all over himself.  
He pushed himself off the ground, careful to avoid the sad puddle of stomach content on his right hand side.  
Why was his heart beating so fast?  
Trying to fucking catch up on the missed beats from last night or something.

He slowly made his way back to camp, head bowed low, eyes irritated by the bright sunshine. It must’ve been at least two hours past sunrise. The boys were probably looking for him.  
Staring into the grass below his feet, Tommy suddenly registered the delicate, red blobs of colour spread throughout the field. Petals thin as butterfly’s wings trembled in the light breeze, and he felt like the world was mocking him.

A bloody field of poppies.

Standing upright was too much suddenly and he sank down on his knees. His skin felt sensitive and prickly all over, and before he could do anything about it, he was giving in to the urge to cry.  
Sitting in a bloody field of poppies and crying his eyes out.

He got himself together after a while and got up on shaky limbs. He wanted to drink, if only to drown out this suffocating sadness in his chest. He’d never smoke opium again.  
Never.  
...maybe he’d at least leave it at one drag next time.

Traipsing back through the rows of tents he was spotted by Arthur.

“Tommy!”

He looked up, sun piercing his eyes painfully. Arthur looked worried and Tommy really didn’t feel like explaining himself.

“We’ve been looking for ya all morning. Where ‘ave you been?”

“M’ fine, Arthur.”

“That’s not what I asked you, is it?” Arthur replied and put a hand under Tommy’s chin to make him look up. Tommy swat at him angrily.

“Just leave me alone, Arthur!”

“You been drinking?”

“What do you care?”

“In a fucking mood today, are we?” Arthur grumbled, but he couldn’t be straight out angry at his brother. He looked in too much of as state. Just wearing his creased undershirt and trousers, sweat-soaked and pale, bloodshot eyes and skin raised in goosebumps even though the day was warm already.

“C’mon, Tom,” he said pacifyingly instead. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

“Not hungry,” Tommy mumbled and wanted to shove past Arthur to get to their tent.

“Eh, Tom?” Arthur stopped him with a hand on his arm. Every touch to Tommy felt like needles piercing his skin. “Are you sick? Comin’ down with somethin’, eh?”

“Just fuck off, Arthur, will ye?”

Tommy spent the next two days inside the tent, laying around being miserable. He still had trouble falling asleep but he always did after some time.  
Arthur brought him cups of tea and rusk, thinking Tommy had come down with the flu or something. At some point, Tommy almost believed that himself.  
Was easier than knowing he’d caused all this by his own guilty hand.

-

14TH JULY 1916 [NEAR BAZENTIN LE PETIT; CIRCUS TRENCH]

Their week off seemed years ago to the boys after going over the edge again on July 7th. It had been more chaotic, and about halfway through no-man’s land the attack had been blown off.  
Enemy fire had been too harsh.  
The number of casualties was sobering, and Commander Douglas Haig had earned himself a gruesome nickname - ‘Butcher Haig’.

The men had been burying bodies for a whole week, the post system broke down with the overwhelming amount of death notices for families at home, and as if everything wasn’t going to shit already, the wire communication broke down on July 14th in the trench Tommy and Freddie were stationed at.

Over the howling of shell fire above their heads, Haig’s voice suddenly made the men stop in their work and turn to listen.

“We’re cut off! We’re cut off from Forest Trench, Villa and Aston Trench!”

At first the soldiers panicked, thinking ‘cut off’ actually meant the Germans had overrun the forest on their right hand side and also taken the one other way back out of the trenches, which lay about 900 yards to their left, in a terrain heavily bombarded day and night.

“The telephone communication has been hit by a shell and we have no contact to the other divisions. We know the approximate location of the destroyed line though. I need a man to go out there and fix it.”

The crowd froze. Gazes averted, the men stood still.

“Bloody cowards!” Haig barked, and Tommy’s every fibre was tense with rage.  
Old, fucking, blue-blooded butcher.  
Damned arsehole.  
He wanted to shout ‘Then go over the top yourself’ but thought better. He did however raise his eyes and stare back at Haig with barely hidden disgust.  
And the commander stared right back at him.

“You.”

Tommy didn’t register the words at first.

“You. What’s your name?”

Freddie beside him was shifting his weight from one leg to the other.  
“Shit, Tommy, he means you,” he whispered.

“Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby, Commander.”

The second time he made use of his title. Haig might as well know he wasn’t just some ordinary private. And yet, Haig just grinned.

“Tunneller, I see?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then you know how to deal with wire. Good man. Don’t make much of a target for the snipers either, do you Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby?”

The way he purposely pronounced ‘Major’ in a mocking way made Tommy’s blood boil. He bit the insides of his cheeks and stared back deviantly.

“Good, good. Come to the main dugout then. We’ll give you your kit and tell you where to go.”

With that Haig turned around, the crowd of relieved soldiers obediently parting for him. Freddie beside Tommy was shaking his head.

“You’re a bloody fool, you know that? Fuck, Tommy, do you know how many of the boys come back from the job? Two in five. See that bastard over there? Simon Smith. He takes bets whenever one gets sent over the edge again. They’ll be betting on your death, Tommy.”

Tommy just shrugged.

“Then let them bet, Freddie. I’ve got a job to do.”

With that he was off towards Haig’s dugout, stopping himself after about ten steps and turning around to Freddie with the ghost of a smile on his lips.

“You lay a bet yourself, Freddie. You can buy me a pack of cigarettes with your takings tonight!”

-

He moved as close to the ground as he could. It wasn’t an area of utmost interest for German attack, yet the one or other shell did land here, and he knew for certain that were he to stand up, he’d make a nice target for a lazy sniper.  
Small man or not. Haig was an ass for joking about Tommy’s height, when he himself wasn’t exactly a giant.

Tommy had spotted the wire a while ago, but not the spot where it was severed. The coordinates had been more vague than he had hoped, and he was mostly relying on his eyes to see where the line was down.  
Then, he finally saw a dip in the line, much closer to the small forest to his right than the approximations of the Commander’s staff had calculated. Which was good actually, since this area was rather quiet normally, and the shell must’ve been a stray for sure.

He crawled over and after about ten minutes, he reached the spot. It was a relatively good spot too, since the shell had created a rather useful crater in which he could find cover while repairing the line.  
Tommy got to work immediately.

It took him some time, but after 20 minutes he had managed to repair the line. Just as he wanted to make his way back, he noticed movement to his right. It was slowly getting dark, but the silhouettes of uniformed men stood out against the dark green of the neighbouring forest. After his initial shock and tensing up, Tommy relaxed again when he recognised their uniforms as British ones.  
He decided to rest for another minute and then get to robbing all the way back.

The wind blew from the direction of the forest, and as he was watching the five men in uniform, it carried their words over to him.

“Kommt schon!”

“Beeil dich, Müller! Sonst sieht uns noch jemand!”

Whatever they were saying, it most definitely wasn’t English. Tommy ducked down deeper into the shell crater, when they came into his direct line of sight.  
Then they disappeared into the trees.

Tommy racked his brain for what German soldiers in British uniforms could plan in that forest. Then a thought struck him.  
The only thing the army used the small forest for was to keep about a hundred horses hidden and save.  
He started crawling again, but not in the direction he’d come from.

When he reached the edge of the forest, Tommy got up, rifle ready to be fired. They couldn’t have gotten very far, most likely didn’t know their way around.  
He carefully walked in deeper.  
Then there was a shot.

He froze.  
Then he started running.

When he reached the clearing of the forest, where the paddocks were, he witnessed utter chaos.  
Dead stable hands and young recruits on the ground, panicking horses being led into the direction of the enemy line. And soldiers. German soldiers in British uniforms.  
Not just five of them.  
No, at least 30 of them, barking harsh sounding orders to their companions, or maybe it was jokes. How should Tommy know? Their language sounded like a thunderweather to his ears at all times.

“Fucking Jerry Bastards,” he whispered. He had to warn his own men and get help. He was by far outnumbered and noticed the German man looking at him far too late. When he did, he thought it best to try his luck and stay where he was.

“Was stehst du da so rum?” the man yelled at him. “Na los! Willst du warten bis die Tommys kommen und uns vielleicht noch helfen die Pferde wegzuschaffen?”

Tommy noted bitterly that the stupid nickname for the average British soldier had apparently crossed no-man’s land and become a term of use in the German ranks as well. He had no idea what the man had said to him, but he moved forward, climbed a fence, snatched a headcollar from a hook and approached a big white stallion. The horse bucked when he came closer, but the whispered words Tommy addressed to him made him calm down.

“Shhh, it’s just noise. It’s just noise.”

When Tommy turned around again, the German was gone and no one else took notice of him as he strut over to the horse shelters. He slid in without making a noise and was met with a frightened face and a raised pitchfork.

“Please! Please don’t shoot!”

The boy was one of the new recruits most likely. Probably hadn’t spent a full month in France yet. He looked like a child to Tommy.

“Please,” the boy whispered one more time and sank back against the back wall of the shelter, seemingly trying to press through the wood. He was crying now.

Tommy finally shook himself from his stupor and spoke to the recruit.  
“S’alright. I’m one of ours.”

The boy just continued to cry, but he lowered the pitchfork, curling in on himself.

“Where the fuck are the guards? Oi, boy! You hear me? Where are the senior officers watching the premises? Why is no one here except a few bloody kids?”

The boy was shaking but he made a weak attempt of explaining the situation.

“They- they took off… Said F-Fridays are for drinking and… and then they just said we should keep an eye on the horses and-”

Tommy put his hand up in a silencing gesture.

“Alright. So they are nowhere near close enough to hear all this ruckus. It’s just me and you then. Eh, come ‘ere. What’s your name?”

The boy shakily rose to his feet and cautiously approached Tommy. He still looked like he feared the older man might be a German after all.

“I’m Thomas, alright,” Tommy whispered and offered the boy his hand. They really had no time for this, but he needed a man who was able to shoot a gun for the plan he had started to formulate.

“Theodore… can call me Theo, if you like.” The boy shook his hand weakly.

“Call me Tommy if you like,” Tommy replied reassuringly. “Now, Theo, do you have a rifle?”

He took a step forward to have a look outside, while Theodore stayed back.

“Why d’you think I would’ve attacked you with a pitchfork if I had one?” the boy replied pitifully and Tommy snorted a laugh.

“Right, you take me revolver then.”

Shoot at the men, try to not hit any horses.  
Tommy’s plan was simple but of rather great effect. Most of the Germans were only lightly armed, which meant they must’ve known not to expect much resistance. Theodore surprised Tommy. He was a far better shot than expected, but just as the first few Germans started to run off, back into the depths of the forest, the boy got a little too enthusiastic in the rush of blood.

“FUCK OFF, YOU FUCKING JERRIES!” he yelled, and Tommy’s hushing came too late. A tall, blonde Captain with the eyes of a hawk, high up on a horse spotted the shelter.

“Die Schüsse kommen von dort!” the Captain yelled, and soldiers who had been running off already, turned around again, returning fire. Tommy cursed, and Theo started to cry again, whispering “Sorry” over and over again.

“We need to get out of here,” Tommy hissed, turning around to inspect the back of the shelter. In that moment, a hissing sound approached them, ending in a ‘plonk’ on the floor next to them.

“GRENADE!” Tommy yelled and pushed the boy backwards, covering him.  
The thunder of the exploding bomb left them both with a high, singing noise in their ears, but the side wall of the shelter had a gaping hole in it now.  
Tommy motioned the boy to crawl through it, while he himself positioned his rifle once more in the doorway, spending the last few of his bullets, all of them hitting their targets.

This time he didn’t hear the hissing of the grenade, but he saw it flying towards him, picked it up and threw it back in the direction of the German Captain.  
He missed, but the explosion was impressive enough it seemed.

“RÜCKZUG!” echoed through the forest, not heard by Theo or Tommy, but they saw more and more German men disappearing in the forest.  
Tommy squeezed outside too, finding Theo taking shelter behind the back wall and dragging him to his feet.  
It was better to get away from here now and come back with more men to assess the damage.

They scrambled off towards the general direction of the trenchline that began right outside the forest. Tommy took one last look back at the battlefield and saw the blonde Captain still remain on the opposite edge of the clearing, his gun raised.  
He turned back around and ran faster, tugging Theodore along by his hand.  
They ran through the by now pitch-black forest, Theodore blindly stumbling behind Tommy, whose heart was threatening to jump from his chest.

Alive.  
Again.

“Tommy, I need a break,” Theodore behind him wheezed, and Tommy slowed down, not willing to stop entirely.  
He did though, when the boy’s steps behind him ceased.

“C’mon, Theo. We need to keep moving.”

He turned around to see the pale face of the boy shining in the small sliver of moonlight that made its way through the branches.

“Tommy, I… I think I have a splinter in my back from when the grenade exploded in the shelter. Can you… can you have a look?”

The boy’s voice sounded strange, not pained in any way but quiet and soft.  
Sleepy in a way.  
Tommy was at his side just in time to keep him from falling.  
Theodore’s jacket was slick with blood, a hole from a bullet gaping below his left shoulder. He sank into Tommy’s arms, blinking sluggishly.  
The Captain hadn’t missed, unlike Tommy.

“Shh. it’s… it’s alright,” Tommy whispered, feeling the body in his arms get heavier by the second. “Are you in any pain?”

“No,” Theodore whispered, raising his hand under extreme effort to grip Tommy’s wrist. “It’s not a splinter, Tommy, is it?”

Tears stung in Tommy’s eyes, but he controlled himself.  
“No,” he replied, his voice sounding void of any emotion.

“Am I dying?”

It took him a while to find his voice again after the question.

“Yes.”

Silent tears were making their way down the young boy’s white cheeks now. He didn’t look scared or sad, moreso strangely relieved, but maybe the moonlight was fooling Tommy’s eyes.

“Can you do something for me?” he asked, looking up at Tommy.

“Anything.”

“Write to my mother. Tell her I died fighting. Tell her that I fought alongside a very brave comrade, and that we won. Can you do that for me?”

Tommy nodded, then decided to try his voice after all, in case the boy couldn’t see him properly in the dark.

“I will. But you’re the hero of the story, eh Theo?”

The boy’s gaze dropped again.  
The wind rustled through the branches, cooling the sweat on Tommy’s back and the growing, wet stain, where the boy’s back pressed into his lap.

After a while, Theo’s chest did not rise anymore and his hand’s grip on Tommy’s wrist had loosened. Tommy just sat there and held him for another moment, before he got up and heaved the boy’s lifeless body into his arms, carrying it the last few yards to their trenches.  
The boy himself, he hoped, was somewhere else now. Somewhere better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Tell me what you think as always!
> 
> AS FOR THE HUGE AMOUNT OF GERMAN STUFF IN THIS:
> 
> “Kommt schon!” --> "Come on!"
> 
> “Beeil dich, Müller! Sonst sieht uns noch jemand!” --> "Hurry up, Müller! Or someone will see us!"
> 
> “Was stehst du da so rum?” the man yelled at him. “Na los! Willst du warten bis die Tommys kommen und uns vielleicht noch helfen die Pferde wegzuschaffen?” --> "Why are you just standing there?" "Get going! Want to wait until the Tommies come and help us get the horses away?"
> 
> “Die Schüsse kommen von dort!” --> "The shots are coming from over there!"


	16. I take a cup for a spoonful and today becomes tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What can I say... it's been a while and I'm sorry!
> 
> This chapter just didn't want to happen for a long time.  
But! It finally has another Greta x Tommy flashback, and a lot of speeches. Less blood and gore as the previous chapters too.  
Just much sad Tommy as always.
> 
> [Chapter title taken from "It ain't water" by Alison Mosshart]

Tommy got another medal.  
A few days after the incident in the forest, he was rewarded with the Distinguished Conduct Medal, which he accepted with empty eyes and deceitfully shaking hands from Commander Douglas Haig.  
Exceptional bravery, vigilance, true patriotism.  
Tommy didn’t really listen to the speech.  
They sent a medal for bravery to Theo’s mother too, and Tommy almost laughed out loud as Haig praised the boy’s fearless determinedness and courage. He could still see his panicked eyes, tear-streaked, pale cheeks and trembling frame when he closed his eyes at night. Throughout the whole ordeal at the paddocks, the boy had feared for his life and it was exactly what he was supposed to do. A recruit, not yet three weeks at the front. He hadn’t seen men die like flies for almost two years like Tommy had, and yet the boy himself was dead already now.

He sent Theo’s mother the promised letter though, consisting of but five quickly scribbled lines.  
An apology.  
He should’ve looked after the young boy more carefully.  
Hesitantly, he added one last sentence about Theodore being a brave man during his last moments, but knew no mother’s loss could be soothed by these words. She’d rather hold her coward son in her arms now.

At least Arthur was cheering over Tommy’s second medal, going on about how he would come home a war hero, a celebrated soldier.

“They’ll look at you with respect, Tom! They’ll look at all of us with respect and admiration-“

“A boy’s dead, Arthur. I couldn’t even save a scared kid. What do I deserve a medal for? For being a lucky bastard and not losing my own life like he lost his? I don’t need people in fucking Birmingham to respect me for a piece of tin, if I can’t look at myself in the mirror.”

Arthur, being Arthur, wrote a boasting letter home anyways, and Polly sent an equally proud letter back. There was two pounds in it too, and the information that the betting shop was running a little better again.  
She said the brothers should use the money to buy a bottle and celebrate, but Tommy put the money away, not telling Arthur about any of it. They could try to do that once John was down here with them again.

The increasing losses in the initial battles of the Somme made Haig’s tactics change towards the end of July, and soon Tommy and whoever was left of 179th Tunnelling Company were back in their old tunnels. The huge explosion their company had blown on the first day of the Somme had not impressed the enemy enough it seemed.  
They needed to get an advantage over the Germans somehow. Somewhere.  
And if it were underneath no-man’s land.

Compulsory night shifts made an unwelcome comeback, and most of the men dreaded the work almost as much as going over the edge by now. The tunnels were dug in a hurry, accidents happened frequently, and their rations in food and drink were cut.  
Old injuries were acting up too; Danny limped a little more towards the end of their shifts, Tommy’s left arm and shoulder started hurting again “precisely a fuckin’ hour after lunch” every day, and at night the spasms in his leg woke him up.  
Never using the opium pipe again had long been forgotten, but he never took more than one drag. Just enough to fall back asleep after rubbing at his painfully tense thigh muscles around the scar from the Verdun bullet.

In the morning, they all crawled out of their tents in the camp and trotted towards the frontline, holding their faces towards the sun for at least a few minutes, before they lit their lamps to climb down into the darkness. The air down there was so poor by now that candles had become entirely useless.  
No one spoke much, everyone was stuck in their heads, trying to save however little air there was to breathe and focused on not tripping over their own tired legs.

Just Freddie was talking about strike, actually spurring on more and more men with the speeches he held before dawn, outside the tunnels.  
Captain Hance simply let him be.  
He had been shot at the last offencive and although his arm was healing, the injury had taken something from him.  
The men didn’t see him as a leader anymore, mocked him for having become a dull string-puppet of Haig.  
He was very quiet these days, Captain Hance. Let his men be and do their work. Until eventually the day would come that they wouldn’t.

9TH AUGUST 1916 [LA BOISELLE, THE SOMME]

“We are not animals to be sacrificed for a greater good! What greater good will come for our families at home, if all of us men will not return home? Who will protect them from poverty? Who will feed their hungry mouths? The government? The King? No! They will have nothing except a letter with the King’s signature, telling them their husband, their father, their brother died a brave man. Some of them will maybe get a piece of metal too, claiming that their man was a bit braver than others even. But what is all that worth? Nothing. Because all those men are dead anyways. And you can’t feed your children on the King’s fucking handwriting and a piece of tin.”

The men growled and nodded along to Freddie’s words.

“And us, boys? Our families will be told that we lie somewhere deep under the earth now, but not because they buried us, no! Because they let us bury ourselves! That’s what we do! We dig our own graves day by day, deeper and deeper. Last night, there was another collapse down in the left gallery. Three men dead, two badly wounded. That’s the fourth bigger accident this week alone, and yet they want us to dig faster and deeper still. I was buried once before myself, and it was nothing but luck that I got away with my life! Thirty other men died, only three survived. It is not enough that a tenth of us survives! It seems we’re not worth more than the rats in the trenches these days. Hell, I’ve even heard the high command call us ‘sewer rats’! Rats or not, I say, we have done enough, boys!”

The crowd cheered, fists were raised and boots stomped on dry ground.  
Tommy walked past the scene on his way to the tunnels, head bowed low, but Freddie spotted him nevertheless.

“Oi, Tommy!”

Tommy looked up at most of the group’s faces staring back at him.

“See, this man, my friend, he was there too. He’s one third of the tenth of men that survived the collapse. C’mere, Tom! Tell ‘em!”

Shaking his head, Tommy ignored Freddie and continued over to the tunnel entrance. He’d had a bad night. Honestly, he only had bad nights, but the previous one had been exceptional really.

Danny had caught some sort of stomach flu and began vomiting his guts out in the middle of the night, leaving Arthur and Tommy to come up with a plan of how to get rid of the soiled, stinking blankets and clothes.  
Tommy had nearly puked a few times on the short walk down to the river to get the worst washed off, while Arthur had gone to fetch a bucket and fresh shirt for Danny.  
Additionally to being kept awake for the remainder of the night, taking care of Danny, both brothers had been worried they’d catch it too.  
At three in the morning, Freddie had tried to sneak back into the tent, hissing a quiet curse, when his nose picked up the sharp stench still wafting through the air.  
Arthur and Danny had been suspecting he sneaked out to spend the nights in some woman’s bed, a nurse from the first-aid station maybe, but sleepless-as-ever Tommy knew better. Freddie discussed communism with a bunch of other men at night. And his hunger for change in a system that Tommy had long given up on, even showed during daytime now.

“Nothing matters but the good ol’ cause, eh Freddie?” Tommy grumbled, when Freddie caught up with him and followed down into the tunnels.

“How’s Danny?” Freddie asked instead, sensing that the air was explosive around Tommy, charged with his friend’s mood rather than dynamite for a change.

“Fucked. Like the rest of us.” Tommy took his shoes off at a fork in the tunnel system, placing them beside the other pairs already left there by other sappers of their company. They worked barefoot or in socks these days to not cause any unnecessary noise.

“Fuck off, Tommy. How is he?” Freddie took his shoes off likewise but kept his socks on.

“Dunno. Arthur took him to the nurses this morning. Maybe he’s just had some bad food. How can you keep your socks on in this fucking wet shithole? Wet socks are the most disgusting feeling ever and even worse, you’ll end up ruining them.”  
Tommy demonstratively stuffed his own pair into his shoes. All the way into the front so no one would get any silly ideas and steal his last good pair.  
Freddie ignored his sock-talk entirely.

“Why won’t you speak up, Tommy? You’re just as frustrated as the rest of us, but you sulk in silence and work like a dog anyways. What’s our purpose in all of this, eh comrade? To dig our own graves down here? Or to wait out until the next time Haig decides he needs some machine gun fodder again?”

“Just shut up and get going, Freddie.”

-

They reached the front of the tunnel they were assigned to and started to work in silence. The ground was wet and heavy clay made the digging incredibly exhausting. They worked with picks and shovels since the tunnels had become too narrow for a cross to be fit inside.  
They could definitely tell Danny with his bear-like strength was missing, based on their exhaustion by midday, when they sat outside the tunnel entrance in the trench, waiting to be given their portion of lunch.  
It was some sort of vegetable and (very little) meat stew, and the second the cook’s assistant emptied a ladle full of it into Tommy’s bowl, he was reminded of last night and Danny’s stomach contents.

He sat through the lunch break without touching his spoon once, hungrily smoked five cigarettes instead and shook his head no first, before nodding a yes, when the Welsh man opposite him asked if he wasn’t going to eat that and could pass it over.

His canteen of cola was empty two hours after lunch and the whiskey from his flask wasn’t exactly a good substitute for a thirsty tunneler. Tommy got dizzy and tired quickly, and when his leg started spasming for the second time that afternoon, he sat down in defeat in the narrow tunnel.  
Freddie continued with the work for another minute, but soon joined Tommy on the ground and handed him his own still half full canteen.

“How are we going to go back home and live fucking normal lives ever again, Freddie?”

The words were whispered and hung heavy in the thin air. Tommy was still rhythmically digging the heel of his hand into the tense muscles of his thigh, and Freddie took his time to digest the question. He couldn’t find a quick answer, momentarily stunned to silence by the fact that Tommy had admitted to hating all of this out loud.

“I don’t know.”

Then after another moment, “I just hope we get to be the ones who will see home again and find out. Try our best, I s’pose… And forget all of this. Bury it somewhere in the pits of our brains.”

“Dig a deep tunnel in our heads, light the fuze, blow it all up and bury it down there forever. Never talk about it anymore. Tell ‘em at home that it was just like a summer camp. Like the ones the rich kids always got sent to. Just a very very dirty and bloody version of that with no secured ticket back home until the fucking day it all ends. ”

Freddie almost smiled at Tommy’s silly comparison of the war with a summer camp. He had always been a boy of vivid imagination and fantasy with a talent in making up stories and characters; even giving them different voices and all. Had always told his younger siblings these stories when they were kids. Sometimes Freddie had asked him to tell him a story too. When they’d been outside on long summer evenings, making campfires in the Lickey Hills, stealing apples from the big mansions’ gardens.

“S’ a fucking never ending summer camp too this,” he chuckled dryly, but Tommy was too far gone in his thoughts to register his humorous remark.

“But what if we can’t bury it deep enough? Or bury ourselves n’ all that we’ve ever stood for with it by accident? I don’t want to be in this fucking dark anymore, Freddie.”

Tommy had started breathing strangely beside Freddie, exhaling strained huffs of air, before quickly sucking in more through his nose. The noise was familiar, and Freddie was unable to look at his friend for a moment.

“I don’t wanna be in the dark anymore.”

He was back in the Lickey Hills once more, Arthur right in front of him, along with Tommy’s uncle Charlie and Curly, rope cutting into all their hands. He pulled, they all pulled, and that strained, breathy noise was there too.

“I don’t wanna be in the dark anymore.”

He’d heard Tommy say this before. And a few moments later, they had pulled him from a forgotten well in the forest, pale skin blood-smeared and shaking.  
Freddie leaned over and put his arm around Tommy’s shoulders, feeling tears trickle down his own cheeks.

“Maybe we don’t have to worry about it right now,” Freddie said, choking slightly on his words. “Maybe we won’t ever have-”

His sentence was cut off by a loud yell from one of the other tunnels.

“GAS! GAS IN THE TUNNELS!”

Their conversation was forgotten immediately, despite its immanent relevance, for they both scrambled to their feet and grabbed their masks, pulling them on with shaking hands. Tommy had trouble slowing his breathing down like they had been taught. He was shaking slightly by the time the yellow wafts crawled up on them, and pressed his back into the wet walls of earth surrounding them.  
Beside him, Freddie was panicking increasingly, as their tunnel filled up and they couldn’t see anymore.  
They had to wait.  
They knew they just had to wait.  
And then get out as fast as they could.  
Breathing slowly and steadily all the while.

But it lasted so long. Too long for Freddie’s taste.  
He closed his eyes and let out a sob behind the mask, which produced a strange, dull sound. Speaking was hard and wasted precious air, not even taking into account that Tommy might not even be able to understand what he was saying, but he couldn’t keep quiet anymore and just wait for the worst to happen. 

“Fuck, fuck! It’s not clearing, Tommy. It’s not clearing.”

Another sob followed, but instead of a muffled answer, a cold, calloused hand grabbed his, squeezing it. Maybe Tommy was made for the tunnels after all. Maybe Freddie did better when he knew he had to climb the ladder up not down.

They stood like this until the yellow fog finally cleared a little and then escaped the tunnels as fast as they could, helping to transport men, who hadn’t been fast enough out too.

-

Danny was doing much better already when they visited him that evening. He grinned and joked around, but only as long as none of the nurses or doctors were close. If a medical worker got too close, he scooted down a little in bed and made sure to make a suffering face.  
His intentions were easy to read.

“You trying to prolong your stay, eh Danny?” Freddie chuckled, while helping himself to a glass of water from the pitcher by Danny’s bedside.

“Wouldn’t mind another day or two here to be honest, Freddie,” Danny admitted without much of a fight. “You alright, Tom? You’re quiet.”

“Just tired, Danny.” Tommy answered, absentmindedly playing with the bullet he always kept in his pocket. He and Freddie had decided beforehand they wouldn’t tell Danny about the gas attack. He was frightened enough every morning they climbed down into the tunnels together.  
“Me n’ Freddie said we’d get a beer and go to bed early tonight. Captain Hance has announced he’ll talk to our company in the morning.”

“Let me know what he said, will ye?” Danny urged them, before he spotted a nurse approaching his bed with a bowl of soup on a tray. “Now piss off you two, yeah? Nurses get mad when you healthy boys stay during dinner time. They say some steal the food from the sleeping patients’ bedside tables.”

-

Tommy and Freddie got their beers at a small tavern in the village right behind the camp. Their talk from earlier in the tunnels was forcefully forgotten above the surface of the earth, and when Freddie on their way back announced tomorrow he would speak out about Captain Hance’s misconduct and lack of loyalty towards his own company, they got into another heated argument.  
It escalated before they even set foot in their tent, and Tommy turned on his heel, walking back towards the village and the open fields. Freddie’s last comment was yelled after him:

“You’re a fucking coward, Tommy! If the ones that do the work never speak up, those butchers will do with us whatever they want! This isn’t about sympathy! Hance should’ve fought harder for his own men, that’s all I’m saying!”

Tommy traipsed back towards Albert with its destroyed church bell tower hovering beyond the roofs, before taking a sharp turn to the right. He knew the surroundings within an hour of their camp relatively well by now, and he had spotted a farmhouse with a big orchard and vegetable gardens on one of his nightly trips.  
There was a dog guarding the premises but that did nothing to impress Tommy in the slightest. He had a piece of sausage ready in his pocket and accompanied by a few whispered Romani words the big Briard dog soon let Tommy pet his head.

Once he was sure the dog would leave him be, he made his way over to the raspberry bushes, picking a good handful before retreating back to the fence. Almost there, he spotted mint leaves and couldn’t resist stuffing some into his trouser pockets.  
He had barely eaten all day, and the beer and whiskey had succeeded in keeping him in a constant state of tipsiness. His tummy rumbled violently in anticipation of the meagre portion of raspberries, and the dog huffed disappointedly when he realised they weren’t for him.  
Tommy took his time with the nightly meal, thinking about what Freddie had said, but he couldn’t find it in himself to agree with him. Tomorrow might become a disaster.  
On his way back, he chewed on some of the mint leaves, comforted by the old habit he had picked up from his mother. Back when she had still been well enough to take them on trips to the countryside in a wagon. He tried to imagine what he would write to her, if she were waiting for him at home still.

‘Charmed a French farmer’s dog tonight, so he’d let me pass. Stole some raspberries and had some mint leaves on the way home.’

He shook his head. There were hundreds of thoughts, memories and fears that he really wanted to tell her about, but he couldn’t think of how he would write any of that down on a piece of paper. Maybe it was better she didn’t have to live through the dreadful reality of having three of her sons fight a war that might swallow them up any of these days.  
He tried to banish the next thought from his head but didn’t succeed.  
Perhaps it was even more sad that he had no clue how he would tell Greta what was on his mind either.

25TH APRIL 1914 [JAMAICA ROAD, BIRMINGHAM]

Tommy shivered on the doorstep of the Jurossi’s house. It was a cold day, and his hopes of being allowed to see Greta were dwindling rapidly and the flowers in his hand seemed to waste away with every second the door remained closed.

He had noticed she hadn’t been feeling well last weekend and taken her home instead of the ride to the hills they had had planned.  
He’d been back the following day, but Kitty had sent him away, claiming Greta needed to rest, and no, even Tommy just sitting by her bedside holding her hand would be too much for now. Besides, it was Sunday and he’d do good to let himself be seen at church once in a while. He had spent the day at Charlie’s yard in the stables, sulking.  
The thing was, Greta never got sick.  
It had always been him coming down with the flu, or picking up a cold from spending too much time outside in not enough layers of clothing. And Greta was always there for him then, took care of him, made him tea and would refuse to go back home for the night, even if Kitty came by in the evening, letting her know their parents would prefer she’d sleep at home. Instead, she’d always spend those nights squeezed in behind him on his too small bed, stroking his back and taking his temperature when he seemed to get worse during the night.  
And now, the one time she wasn’t well, they wouldn’t allow him to do the same for her?

His determinedness didn’t help, and Kitty or her mother continued to send him away every following day. When Tommy’s determinedness had finally reached its peak on Friday, her dad had hauled a shoe and a few foal Italian curses after him, upon catching him in his attempt to climb the ivy overgrown side of the house.

Those first few days, he had merely felt treated unfairly by them.  
He had been with Greta for almost two years now, won her family over by tirelessly courting her as if she were royalty, and now they just wouldn’t let him see her when she wasn’t well.  
But over the course of the week, their exhausted faces started to frighten him more and more, and more so the fact that they still refused to tell him what was going on.  
He’d even had to tell Polly, who had started worrying about him because he couldn’t eat, and he had shown up late to work at Charlie’s twice this week.  
He needed Greta to be alright and well soon, so everything could go back to normal.

The door opened and Kitty looked at him with tired, unsurprised eyes.

“You can’t keep me away from her forever.”

“Good morning to you too, Thomas.”

“Is she any better today?”

Kitty said nothing and stared at the flowers in his hand instead.

“She’ll like these,” she sighed after a moment, pointing at the colourful bunch. “Our parents have gone out, so I’ll let you in. But you will leave at once if I tell you to. You hear me, Tom? Papi is still mad at you.”

He nodded, feeling anticipation explode deep in his stomach.  
He’d get to see her.  
Everything would all be alright in a bit. Just needed to believe in it.  
The nagging feeling that it might not, never quite left though.

“Alright. Go upstairs then. I’ll be there in a minute and bring a vase for the flowers,” Kitty announced and stepped aside to let him pass.

Tommy headed for the stairs immediately, but suddenly Kitty’s fast steps were behind him again and her hand on his arm stopped him just outside Greta’s bedroom door.

“Tom… you can’t kiss her, you know. Don’t… just keep your distance, yeah?”

Unable to formulate the question that was burning in his brain, he nodded again, finally pressing down the handle.  
Greta was asleep, face turned towards the door, blanket pulled up to her nose. She looked pale and exhausted, like most people in Small Heath did all their lives, but never her.  
She had always looked healthy and strong with her tan skin, flushed cheeks and shimmering black hair. Tommy had often envied her for never getting sunburnt or colonized by freckles all over like he did. She had mocked him, saying he’d better be glad his appearance perfectly qualified as English.

“Might turn out to be an advantage one day, gypsy boy,” she had laughed and kissed his sunburnt nose.

Tommy realised he had just been standing there motionlessly, when Kitty slipped back into the room and past him. She took her sister’s hand in hers, squeezed it gently and whispered to her.

“Hey, wake up, sorella. You’ve got a visitor.”

Greta stirred underneath the blankets, blinking her eyes open and closing them again quickly, when the cool morning light pierced them. Kitty pushed another pillow behind her little sister’s back and helped her sit up. The coughing fit that shook Greta, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut once more, made Tommy’s insides clench painfully, and it took Kitty’s hand on his back to push him forward towards the chair beside her bed.

“He seems to have lost his voice on the way up, sorella, but he brought you flowers,” Kitty smiled, when Greta’s face lit up upon seeing Tommy. He wanted to hug her, pull her into his lap right that second and never let go of her ever again, but he sat in the chair paralysed. When he finally reached his hand out to take hers, she did the same and their fingers bumped together, making Greta laugh.

“Where’d your voice go, Tommy? I was hoping you’d be the one talking, since my voice isn’t the best right now,” she commented hoarsely, smile never leaving her face.

He stared into her beautiful, brown eyes and squeezed her small hand in his. Her eyes were still the same, and now that she was awake and had seen him, her face looked a little less pale too, much happier at least.

“How are you?” Tommy managed to whisper, scared his vocal cords might actually fail him. She squeezed his hand firmly, still smiling.

“A lot better now. Kitty would you please just relieve him of the flowers because I’m afraid he’s squeezing the life out of them.”

She chuckled, when Tommy looked down at his clenched fist around the flower roots, before Kitty pried them from his hand with a roll of her eyes.

“I still remember you mocking Arthur for being hopelessly in love with that girl a few years back. What did you call him? Something like ‘a useless idiot unable to form coherent sentences anymore and instead behaving like an ape at all hours’? It was something along the lines of that,” Kitty smiled and put the vase on Greta’s bedside table, before leaving them alone. Not without reminding Tommy once more that he had to leave once she told him to.

“Thank you for the flowers, Tommy,” Greta smiled, some of the fatigue returning to her face, as she stared at him longingly. As if he were gone again already.

“I missed you,” Tommy admitted shamelessly. “I’ve been sick with worry all week. Couldn’t get a bite of food down.” He brought her hand up to his face and kissed it. “Greta, what’s-”

She interrupted him, all the earlier happiness having vacated her face, leaving her just as ghostly pale and sick-looking as before, when she had been asleep. The tears collecting in the corners of her eyes didn’t help either.

“The doctor says it’s consumption, Tommy. I might’ve picked it up when we went to see papi’s brother in London over Easter. I… I don’t want to believe it actually is - maybe it’s not it! Maybe it’s just a bad cold. You remember, when we were surprised by the rain that afternoon two weeks ago? Maybe I just- I don’t want-”

Tommy couldn’t keep himself from pulling her into an embrace anymore. He sat down on her bedside and pulled her towards him, letting her head rest where his shoulder met his neck. Her tears seeped into his shirt and her hand rumpled his starched collar, but he didn’t care. He kissed her matted hair and held her tight, rubbing soothing circles on her back. After a while, Greta lifted her head from his shoulder and looked up at him, all red, teary eyes and snotty nose, and Tommy couldn’t help but kiss her.

“T-Tommy… no,” Greta protested, shoving at him weakly. When he still didn’t back off, she turned her face, another desperate sob escaping her lips as she pushed him away.  
“Tommy… you can’t- we can’t do that. You’re gonna get sick too. When you came down with the flu last winter, you were doing so poorly, you wouldn’t… I couldn’t bare to know I made you sick too, Tommy.”

He sat there on her bed, leaning away from her now, bracing his weight with his outstretched arms, looking like a beaten puppy. As if she didn’t want nothing more than to let him kiss her and kiss him back, or at least lie beside him, bodies pressed together, like they had whenever he’d been sick. But it was different this time. As much as she wished it were just a cold, she knew it wasn’t, and he’d have to stick to the rules to not end up like her.

“I’m sorry,” she spoke with a calmer voice, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. Tommy sat up again and reached his hand out to brush away another one, but she caught his hand before he could.

“I love you, Greta… “  
She could tell he was close to tears himself, and she just wanted it to stop. She regretted the thought immediately, when Kitty rushed inside and made it come true.

“Tom, you have to leave. Now.”

He looked confused for a second, then his face changed to that dangerous stubbornness he possessed, and Greta feared this would not end well. She grabbed his hand tightly.

“I will tell them they have to allow you to see me, Tommy, yeah? But now you need to go. I will send Kitty around once I’ve talked to our parents. I love you too, Tom.”

The stubborn expression on his face changed to sad affection and he got up and let himself be ushered downstairs and out on the street. On his way home, the whole dilemma of the situation started to kick in. People died of consumption. Ten alone last year on Watery lane.

10TH AUGUST 1916 [THE SOMME; BRITISH CAMP NEAR ALBERT]

It was just after sunrise, when the men of the 179th Tunnelling Company found themselves gathered in the field behind their campsite.  
Captain Hance stood on his preferred stage of two wooden boxes, just like he always had, but everything about him seemed different nevertheless.  
His face was gaunt, sunken eyes gazing listlessly at his men, his shoulders had a heavy slouch to them, his arm still hung in a sling. Alone his voice was the same, at least when Tommy closed his eyes for a second, once he spoke.

“Soldiers! I have news for you. The commanding forces of the BEF have agreed on new orders. The tunnelling companies are to work as quickly and efficiently as possible these days. Therefore they have decided to make Sundays working days as well.”

The crowd of men gave a low sound of disapproval. Sundays were fucking sacred. One day they could rest their weary bones and go to the village to have a few drinks.

“Furthermore, rations of alcohol will be reduced. As of this moment, I am not aware of how much and when, but I want you to know still. You all know it has been a troublesome few weeks concerning food deliveries from home, and the command asks you to be understanding of the measures they have to take under these circumstances.”

Freddie’s voice rose from the bulk of unhappy men like a growing storm.

“Understanding of the circumstances? We’re the ones risking our lives on a daily basis! Who is asking us, if we are happy with these ‘circumstances’? Taking away Sundays will lead to a riot, I can guarantee you that, Captain. We have had enough!”

“I understand your concerns-” Hance started, but Freddie cut him off.

“First, we are dragged from our holes so there’s some more fodder for the German machine guns, then we get pushed back down into that same old hole, and now Haig is expecting us to work ourselves to death, is that it? You know, maybe having a Captain, who would actually stand up in front of the command for his own men once in a while would help!”

The men around him nodded their heads, sending a wave of low “Yes”s towards Hance, and some of them even raised their fists in the hot morning air.

“We do the work, so we say what can be done. In war or in the factories. There are some things that we want, and if we don’t get them the high command will see the tunnels do not dig themselves.”

The crowd cheered; Freddie had always had that effect on larger groups of people, even back in school. He could convince people to stand up and fight. Captain Hance looked defeated on his podest and he just stared back at Freddie with empty eyes. The men didn’t expect anything from his side anymore, when he finally spoke.

“You can rebel against the orders if you like. Organise your strike. I will not stop you. But let me tell you this, Private Thorne: We shoot soldiers who fall asleep during the night watch, so I guess you can imagine what the treatment for strikers will be. Commander Haig does not care about any of you, yes, I can confirm that. But I do. If you chose to strike, Haig will, rest assured, as a first measure, remove me from my position as Captain of the 179 and install one of the men closest to him instead. Believe me when I tell you, he has heard of the speeches that were held in front of the tunnels and he was not amused. There are rumours going around, boys. Rumours, that men of the 179 are causing tunnel collapses on purpose.”

The sappers were in a furry now. Men yelled that it was all lies, made-up stories. Freddie had gone quiet.

“I know, boys! I know it is not true!” Hance continued, his voice as strong as it had always been, easily heard over the others’. “I know most of you by name. I know you are exceptional workers, hell, I have been down in the tunnels with you enough times to be able to tell that you are some of the bravest lads in this whole war! But if you rebel against their orders, I cannot help you anymore. I was given orders to deploy a bunch of you back to the storm troops last week. For attending secret communist meetings at the pub in Albert. I was able to make that go away. The days are hard, but I can assure you, I will always try my best for you.”

He didn’t wait for any responses of his men, just let his eyes roam over their gathered mass and then stepped off the boxes.

“Now you better get to work. Or don’t. It is your decision.”

Not a single tunneller strayed from the bulk of men, which slowly got going and moved towards the trenches and the tunnels. Tommy let himself be carried by their flow, not bothering to look for Freddie. No matter how good he was when it came to rousing men to walk with him, Freddie had never been one to like walking alone.

It wasn’t until later, down in the dark of the tunnels, Freddie working silently beside him, that a heavy thought crossed Tommy’s mind.  
Greta was dead for two years today.

-

Strangely, it was Arthur who found him at his secret spot by the big walnut tree in the field behind the camp. Tommy was halfway through a bottle of rum on an empty stomach, and Arthur made sure to take the bottle from his hands once he sat down beside his little brother.  
They were quiet for a long time, watched the sun disappear behind the horizon, felt a soothingly cool breeze on their skins.

“You know,”Arthur started, “I’ve heard there’s an old marine at camp doing tattoos on the soldiers. Does ‘em for a drink or three pence. Was thinking about getting one.”

They were quiet for another minute, before Tommy abruptly rose to his feet, steadier than Arthur expected him to be, and trotted back towards the camp.

“Let’s go and have a look then.”

Arthur caught up with him and they walked side by side. He put his arm around Tommy just outside the camp grounds.

“It’s two years today, is it not?”

Tommy swallowed hard and kept his eyes trained on the ground.

“Damn Tommy, it’s always worse with you two years after. Was the same after mum went. First you bury all that grief deep down and then it comes back to haunt you much later. We can’t bring back the past, Tom. No matter how much we wish we could.”

He had his moments. Arthur. Sometimes he said things that made sense.  
Tommy snaked his own arm around his brother’s back, letting him lead towards the place.  
He paid the old marine with the half full bottle of rum that night and got a tattoo on his right biceps.

‘Forrard’.

No going back anymore, only forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think pleeeease!
> 
> I need your thoughts and constructive criticism to get another chapter of this written!


	17. Heavy-laden noontides with the evening's peace to win

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am not even going to say 'It's been a while' or anything like that.  
2020, especially its second half has been something else entirely and everyone's going through it same as me, so let me just say:  
I hope everyone is safe and healthy and able to find happiness in the small things in these trying times.
> 
> I really don't know if it's happiness I can offer with this new chapter, but... have some angst! Yay? It also has Polly and Ada in the beginning so maybe that's a goodie?
> 
> (Chapter title taken from May Wedderburn Cannan's poem "Rouen")

Polly rolled her eyes at him fumbling with the matches, fag already glued to his lips as always these days; she wasn’t sure when he had started to depend on them. Too early in his life, that’s for sure.

“Christ’s sake, let me help you then,” she finally exhaled and snatched the match and the box from his trembling fingers. She lit the match with one quick motion, dipping the surroundings into a warm, orange glow. Polly caught herself staring at his face. The fire dancing on his too high cheekbones, feigning a light in his eyes.  
A light she knew wasn’t there anymore.  
His throat bobbed and a shiver ran down her back when he looked at her too. The light of the match had gone out and the room seemed darker than before, except for the glowing cigarette butt and its reflection in his big eyes. For a moment, she was sure she knew a star constellation with the same-

“M’ cold,” Tommy mumbled apologetically, helplessly pinned under his aunt’s unwavering, thoughtful glare. He sucked until the cigarette butt glowed red again.

“Which is why we filled the tub with hot water, remember?” Polly replied patiently, shaking her head over her own stupor and the apparent vacancy of logical thinking in this room. Stepping away, she grabbed a fresh bar of soap from one of the cupboards and dropped it into the water. She realised she couldn’t recall if she’d had to help him do this because he was shaking too much or if he’d forgotten how to draw a bath alltogether. She suspected an equal measure of both had been involved.  
She looked up at him still standing in front of the dead fireplace, vacant eyes fixed on the blue ashes and fingers flexing right in front of the aglow cigarette.

“But of course you’d rather try to get warm cupping your hands over a fucking fag.”

Tommy dropped his hands immediately after she’d pointed it out. Habits from the war were hard to break.  
Despite the abundance of stupidity in his behaviour, Polly couldn’t quite bring herself to scold him. He seemed so lost, standing in his own home.

“Just… get in the tub, Tommy.”

His eyes snapped up to meet her gaze, something close to embarrassment awake in them too now (thank God, it was better than the usually vacancy), and just as Polly wanted to give him a speech about having seen him naked countless times on bathdays when he’d been a boy, he started taking his clothes off with shaky hands, cigarette resting loosely between his discoloured lips.  
When his bare back revealed raised, bluish scars scattered among the goosebumps, she felt her heart sink a little.  
It was not like she hadn’t known. He still had a limp bad enough to make it obvious his body had taken its share of war, and she herself had taken care of his wounds since they’d sent him home. His face contorted when he pulled his trousers over his right thigh but before she could cross the room to help, he was already sat in the tub, knees drawn to his chest, head hanging low, right hand resting on the edge of the tub, where a thin line of smoke curled upwards from the cigarette.  
He always managed to keep them lit. They never went out unless he wanted them to. Might be the gypsy in him; always keep your fires going, even through the coldest of nights.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“You should be glad.”

He raised his eyes to look at her through thick lashes and with thinly veiled disdain as he raised the cigarette to his lips again and took a deep drag.

You’ll never understand.

His eyes seemed to scream it at her.  
Polly changed her mind. They were not vacant, they rather seemed possessed; something almost spilling into their watery blue, tainting the last bit of recognition he bore.  
She didn’t know him anymore.

“Got away with your life. How many others never had the chance to see their homes again?”

She shouldn’t push him but she couldn’t help herself. He had always needed a well measured kick in the arse, Tommy, to spill the beans. He was home, he was healing, what more could he want? The buzzing of a fly bumping against the window repeatedly distracted her for a second. Wasn’t it too cold for flies at this time of year?

“This war will go on without you. It’ll come to an end eventually and your brothers will return home, if God will let them. You’re lucky, Tom. Think of all the dead boys rotting somewhere in the French soil, think of all the ones still about to face their death one of these days.”

The water had turned dark around him. Polly wondered why; he hadn’t been dirty, his skin had been milky white and clean, translucent in places, shimmering with a chilled, purple undercurrent.

“I envy them.”

He flicked the shrunk cigarette butt into the water, and she realized it wasn’t water anymore at all, but thick, cherry red-

2ND AUGUST 1916 [SMALL HEATH, WATERY LANE]

Polly shot up, knocking one of her pillows out of bed. Her bedroom was dark but the air was still too warm from the mild night and the too hot day that had preceded it. A fly was frantically buzzing somewhere behind the drawn curtains, trying to get through the invisible glass barrier.

Just a dream.  
And a fly could mean a lot of things.

Her back felt sticky with sweat and Polly was out of bed quickly, without ever really making the decision to get up.  
Could simply mean unrest, dirt -  
Even the water in the washbowl she kept by the mirror was lukewarm. She splashed it in her face anyways and wondered how many weeks ago they’d received Tommy’s last letter.  
-She was sure it could just be connected to dirt. The torn fields of France, the tunnels underneath. Arthur had written that the smell from the latrines was almost unbearable this summer and the Somme had as many rats as all of England and they were twice as big too.

Quietly, she crept down the stairs in order to not wake Finn or Ada, though the sun was now slowly fighting her way through the darkness and morning wasn’t far anymore.  
Flies could also mean infection though, decay.  
And what constellation had it been she had seen when he had looked at her, smoking his cigarette in the dim light?  
She pulled the stack of letters from the cupboard, sighing when she found them chaotically arranged, some of them bent at the edges. Finn went through them almost every day. Granted, the boy had finally learned how to read properly by dissecting his brothers’ letters again and again and again.

They’d had at least five letters from Arthur and John since the last one Tommy had sent.  
She unfolded that last one they’d had from him and put it down on the table surface.

May 1st.

His last letter had been written on the first of May, three months ago. Although Arthur had mentioned him at least once in all of his recent ones, Tommy himself had apparently gone back to his bad habit of being a lazy writer.  
Polly read through the letter quickly. He had been healing up, not yet put back into service and wouldn’t be working the full hours for a while, but he was getting better or so he’d said. She recalled Arthur writing something similar around the same time; about Tommy being a stubborn bastard not accepting any help but that he indeed was getting better by the day.

Fishing for another, earlier letter, Polly remembered the strangely calm feeling which had settled over her when this particular one had arrived.  
Arthur had written to them about a month earlier, in March, after their failed mission in Verdun. He hadn’t seen his brothers for days at the time, his last memory being them taken away by medical staff. Some of the words had been hard to decipher because of the smudged ink.  
It wasn’t uncommon in any of Arthur’s letters though - Polly had figured out long ago that he cried whenever he thought about home a little too hard.  
Ada had cried too reading that letter, and they had waited and plotted for four days before carefully letting Finn know two of his brothers had been badly injured again.  
He’d woken up in tears, calling for Polly every night until finally a letter from John had arrived, letting them know he’d be discharged soon and that Tommy would follow soon after.The nightly crying had only ceased entirely once the letter from Tommy himself had been delivered too though.

But May 1st was a long time ago by now.  
For a moment, Polly wondered if he’d actually still have a limp from the injury in his thigh, before she got up, shaking her head at herself and stuffed the letters back into the cupboard. Constellations, regardless of which one exactly could symbolise a new phase of life, a new beginning, choosing a different path. She didn’t want to think of what the tub full of blood could mean.

Why couldn’t the stubborn idiot just grab a pencil and write down a few reassuring lines once in a while?

The kettle was just boiling when she registered the stairs creak. According to the sound of it, someone heavier than Finn.  
Ada then.

“Good morning,” she slurred, stepping into the kitchen still wearing her nightgown. “Is there any tea?”

“Morning,” Polly smiled. “In a minute, dear.”

Ada slumped down in one of the chairs with a big yawn. She was always tired ever since she had started working at the BSA over a year ago. Poor girl shouldn’t have to.

“It’s been a while, eh?” Ada said quietly.

“What has?” Polly asked, pouring the tea into two cups. When she turned around, she saw she’d forgotten one letter, Tommy’s latest, on the kitchen table.

“Been a while since Tommy last wrote.”

She looked up with a small smile and a “Thanks”, when Polly put the teacup down beside her.

“He’s fine. Arthur said so in his last letter.”

“Then why were you looking at the last one he sent?” Ada inquired with a knowing smile playing around her lips.  
Polly simply took a long sip from her tea.

“I asked Freddie about him when I wrote to him for his birthday. They’re still not really talking it seems.”  
She thought it necessary to justify writing a letter to Freddie. Polly didn’t need to know she did so regularly and he sent his letters back to his old address, to which the new resident, a woman who had been a work colleague of his late mother, had agreed. She handed the letters over to Ada who stopped by twice every week after her shift.  
She’d asked Freddie how Tommy had been on the anniversary of Greta’s death, to which Freddie had replied that he hadn’t properly spoken to him in a while, never mind asked about that particular topic.  
‘He drinks too much and eats too little’ was about all he’d had to say about Tommy.

“I simply can’t understand what they are fighting about. I don’t even think either of them really know why they are angry with each other.”

Polly snorted and took another sip of her tea before she got up to prepare Finn’s breakfast.  
“Men behaving like children. What else is new?”

“So you are worried too then?” Ada grinned and Polly threw her a quick glance and a sigh.

“I always am.”

-

Tommy woke up for a few days in a row, unable to sleep on his right side because of the burning sensation caused by rubbing the fresh tattoo on the rough fabric. He was therefore even more restless than usually and often snuck out of the tent to wander through the relatively quiet night air.  
‘Relatively quiet’ these days meant that the shelling was far enough away to almost be overheard, if only the wind blew in the right direction. They’d be on trench duty again, starting next week and though he couldn’t sleep in the camp either, Tommy didn’t look forward to resting his weary bones in the crammed dugouts again.  
It had not been decided yet, when or where exactly the attack on the German line would take place, but the commanders had promised it would be easy.  
The German wire was said to be destroyed almost entirely on a long stretch of land and the trenches behind it as well.  
Tommy was slow to believe anything Haig and the High Command said these days.

In the village, which had still been held by the Germans not even a month ago, the people were sure the Allied advance would not be successful. Some even spread rumours of an intentional German retreat to lure them into a trap.  
Concerning the tunnels, measures had been taken, since more and more British and German ones collided, resulting in fighting underground. Tommy, Freddie and Danny sure had been lucky so far to not have gotten into a tunnel fight but being more careful and prepared to encounter the enemy underground made sense even though it didn’t make either of them feel any better about climbing down the ladders every morning.  
Tommy had banished Greta from his thoughts after almost sending a regretful, sadness-drenched letter to Ada, written during a night of being very drunk and miserable.  
He’d torn the letter apart and made a little bonfire with it by his not so secret spot at the big walnut tree. The itch of the tattoo on his biceps had reminded him of what he’d sworn to himself.  
She was in the past. He’d move on.

3RD AUGUST 1916 [THE SOMME, NEAR OVILLERS]

“Fucking hell, Tom!”

Danny.  
Thank god. Just Danny.  
Tommy’s eyes shot open.  
Falling asleep on the watch was not something you wanted to get caught for by one of the superior officers. Sergeant Major or not, it was considered a brutal neglect of responsibility towards your fellow comrades. He shivered.  
Good thing it was just Danny.

“Dozed off, eh? Didn’t think you still do that sort of thing these days, Tommy. Sleeping, you know,” he chuckled and sat down on the wooden bench beside Tommy’s lookout post.

“Thanks, Danny.”

“For what?”

“For what? For fucking waking me up, man,” Tommy grinned, rubbing at his eyes. He hadn’t slept very well the last couple of nights and volunteered for the watch. In the evening, he’d also realised he was out of opium so there was no point in trying to sleep anyways. Or at least he’d thought so.  
His body had apparently decided to show him it was theoretically still possible to sleep, while fucking standing upright, leaning against the wall of the trench even.

“Can’t sleep myself tonight,” Danny continued, staring at the dry ground. It was still warm, even after midnight and it was going to be another hot day tomorrow. Soon it’d be one week without the slightest bit of rain. The men in the trenches didn’t quite know anymore what they preferred; the damp and wet weather that brought cool air but also made the trenches become a muddy mess which gradually seeped into their boots, or the hot, unforgiving sunshine all day long, which made them thirsty and sticky with sweat after as much as walking to the latrines.  
Tommy and Danny usually didn’t care. The tunnels always stayed dark, cool and stuffy, and for the past few hours Tommy had felt cold despite the mild night. And nauseous, disorientated, too tired to stand upright and too awake to fall asleep really - in short, his body was going through withdrawal, which was the last thing he needed right now. The realisation that he showed signs of withdrawal at all was shameful enough.  
A shiver ran down his body again.

“You know,” Danny spoke up again, “I keep on thinking about going away. Leave all this shit behind and never come back. Try to get to the docks, then sail off to America. Find work and then send money to Rosie and the boys so they can come after me.”

Tommy opened his eyes and shifted his weight from one leg to the other a little too quickly. His bowels revolted at the slightest movement and his head went into a spiral of dizziness.  
Deep breaths.  
There was, as usual, nothing in his stomach that could make an unwelcome reappearance and he could just lean back against the trench wall.

“I could kill for a cup of tea right now,” he answered after a moment.

“You even listening, Tommy?” Danny exclaimed, voice shaking. Tommy didn’t even bother turning his head to look at him. “Have you- have you ever… Fuck, you just never listen to what anyone says these days, do you?”

“You’re talking about deserting, Danny. Why would I want to indulge you in that stupid little fantasy? If you run away, you’ll have enemies on both sides. Either of them catch you, German, English, French or I don’t know who- doesn’t matter - you’re a dead man and you’ll never see your wife and your sons again. We don’t run, Danny. We stay and we die, or we survive until this war is done.”

Danny stood abruptly at those words and turned away without another word. His footsteps disappeared into the night and Tommy thought that if he’d do it right now, try to run away, he wouldn’t have the strength to go after him.  
He leaned his head back against the wall, tried to get comfortable so the pounding in his head could fade into a muted throb, but not comfortable enough to doze off again by accident.  
He had to stay awake.  
Just fight the slow dosing-off-  
.  
.  
.

It felt like being struck by lightning when someone shook him by the shoulders an indefinite amount of time later.

Fuck.  
His bowels clenched together painfully and he could feel cold sweat forming on his neck and forehead.

He fell asleep again. Fuck.

Slowly, Tommy dared to blink his eyes open. The headache had eased with sleep but he could already feel it coming back full force with the swirling thoughts now racing through his brain. Well, getting shot in the head by a firing squad would be bringing an end to that.  
His eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness. No one seemed to have brought torches. His helmet sat forgotten on the ground beside his right boot. Tommy knew he had to lift his head but it would certainly hurt and send his tummy into revolt.

A hand holding something appeared in his range of vision. He blinked slowly against the strange, warm, wet steam coating his eyelashes.

“Tea.”

Tommy lifted his head a little bit.

“We’ve run out of milk but you seem to be in need of a strong cuppa anyways.”

Tommy didn’t move an inch but kept on staring at the cup with a puzzled gaze until Danny grabbed for his hand and shoved the cup into it.

“Fuck’s sake, Tom. You said you wanted tea. S’ not like I’m ‘anding you a dead rat.”

The heat from the tin cup seared into his skin and made Tommy realise how icecold his hands were. He blinked again and brought it to his lips.

“Tommy, no! It’s-”

Danny didn’t get any farther, for Tommy had already taken one spluttering gulp of the too hot tea and was bent in half now and busy coughing up what liquid had gone the wrong way entirely.

“Fuck. C’mere.”

Danny first grabbed the cup, which Tommy had managed to somehow keep from spilling its contents on the ground, and then grabbed a retching Tommy around the waist to make him sit down on the bench.  
He sat down next to him, put an arm around his shoulders and pulled his shivering comrade a little closer, despite himself feeling entirely too warm.  
While he waited for the dry retches to stop, Danny blew on the hot contents of the cup. He was pretty sure by now that Tommy’s condition of late had something to do with that opium pipe they had smoked together once before an offensive.

“Better?” Danny asked once the gagging subsided and Tommy leaned back into his arm with a small nod of his head. He melted a little more into Danny’s side, huddling closer for warmth apparently. It felt ridiculous in the warm summer air, but Danny wasn’t sure if the fact that Tommy accepted- no, openly sought out closeness and physical contact wasn’t even more surprising. Had to usually force the small fucker into a hug after another day of not dying. Danny had never understood why some men were so ardent to neglect a good hug. A good hug could make this world seem a little less messed up after all.  
Tommy beside him squirmed and brought his sleeve up to wipe at his mouth and nose.

“Here,” Danny said quietly and offered him the cup again, which Tommy accepted with shaky hands. “Should be alright to drink now.”

“Thanks.”

He looked absolutely drained. Bone-deep exhaustion making his whole body tremble slightly. Couldn’t very well leave him and Freddie alone after this now, right? Not with Freddie still giving Tommy the silent treatment and Tommy being unable to sleep (or not capable of staying awake when it mattered) and going through withdrawal all on his own. Had to stay at least long enough until he was sure Freddie wouldn’t get himself into trouble causing more communist rioting and strikes, and Tommy here wouldn’t get shot for sleeping on the watch or overdosing the next time he got his hands on some opium.  
He should probably tell Arthur about it.  
The brothers had always seemed close enough in Danny’s eyes. Maybe his older brother could talk some sense into Tommy.

“S’ probably just a stomach bug. Please don’t tell anyone, eh Danny.”

Those blue eyes were boring into him now as if he had read his thoughts. A bit on the glassy side still, albeit very convincing. His eyes had this commanding aura; a bit frightening actually but Danny let out a small huff and a nod anyways, tugging Tommy a little closer. He fit under his shoulder easily, and his uniform wrinkled around where Danny’s arm held him. Too much fabric, too little fat on him these days. Freddie had confided in him that he was worried about Tommy not eating, but Danny had told him he wasn’t going to bug Tommy with questions on Freddie’s behalf. 

“Will keep an eye on you though, eh? Until that… stomach bug passes.”

4TH AUGUST 1916 [THE SOMME, NEAR OVILLERS]

Tommy dragged himself to the washing troughs outside the tunnels after sunrise. He unbuttoned his jacket with numb fingers, realising the mostly shirtless men stared at him with puzzled expressions. It was early but the sweat beading on their foreheads made it clear that they would certainly not put their jackets on at any time today. He took his own jacket off completely once he was there, then his sweat-soaked undershirt too.  
The water in the troughs was murky and lukewarm but Tommy splashed it onto his chest and back nevertheless, hoping to at least wash off the icy night sweat. He shivered through the ordeal of trying to wash off most of it and decided he wouldn’t put his sweaty shirt on anymore. Instead, he shuffled into his jacket, the fabric rough and scratchy on his irritated skin.

As he was stumbling towards the tunnel entrance, grabbing a pickaxe and a few empty sacks, Captain Hance observed him from where he was standing a few feet away, waiting for another team of sappers to show him to a listening post.

“Sergeant Major?”

Tommy was too far gone to recognise the title as addressed to himself. It didn’t have any meaning really while he was working in the tunnels.

“Shelby.”

He recognised the voice before he had fully heard his own last name and squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. He really didn’t want to face his captain right now.

“Good morning, Captain Hance, sir.”

He tried to stand straight and still, hold his head up high too, even though the sun stung in his eyes.

“Are you certain it is a ‘good’ morning, Shelby?” the Captain asked and to Tommy’s despair it sounded worried.  
“Come over here for a moment.”

Tommy trudged over to where he stood, head bowed again. He was sure his pupils were as big as a cat’s at night. His intention of keeping his eyes hidden proved fruitless because Hance brought a hand to Tommy’s chin and tilted his head up.

“How much did you take?”

He let go of him again and Tommy quickly averted his eyes. In the tunnels it was better, the darkness made it more bearable. Outside during the day he felt like he was going blind.

“Look at me!” Hance roared into his face when he didn’t answer. “How much did you bloody take?”

“Nothing. I’ve run out.”

He was still staring at his captain’s boots. He was shifting, took a half-step back, then planted both feet steadily on the ground again.

“Did I not tell you… You look like death warmed over, are you aware of that? How long since you last had a dose?”

“Two nights ago.”

“And you have been taking it daily? ‘Course you have, right?”

“Not every single-“

“-Otherwise you wouldn’t be in such a state after missing just two nights, eh?” Hance sighed, scratched the back of his head.The higher ranks might’ve been spared from getting the lice cut but the lice certainly didn’t spare them.

“I should’ve kept an eye on you, I guess. Made sure you don’t overdo-“

“With the greatest respect, sir,” Tommy cut him off now, forcing himself to look up. “I don’t need to be looked after.”

Hance huffed a bitter laugh and raised his eyebrows at him. “Isn’t that what we men like to tell ourselves, hm?”  
He pulled his cap on again and when he saw the team of sappers he’d been waiting for, he started walking.  
Tommy turned on his heel as well, heading towards the tunnel entrance.

“Oh and Shelby. You are going to report to the first aid station this afternoon for a medical check-up. I want to keep informed about how my men are doing. Starting with the, you know… higher ranks.”

Tommy gave a short nod and turned around again with a grim expression. Ranks didn’t matter in the tunnels. He was simply using Tommy’s title to justify him being the only one down for a check-up. Fuck him.

-

“Christ’s sake, Tommy,” Freddie whispered loudly. “Pay attention, will ye?”

Tommy tried to keep his hands from shaking, but he still had trouble tying the fuses together securely. Freddie eyed him suspiciously, yet he kept quiet and didn’t ask any questions.  
Danny ignored Tommy’s questionable condition altogether thankfully.

“I sure know you won’t light the fuse this time,” Freddie sighed exasperatedly and pushed Tommy back lightly once he was done. It hadn’t really been a push even, more of a guiding hand backwards, but Tommy still stumbled in the narrow tunnel and crashed into Danny’s chest.

“You alright?” Danny whispered, and helped him regain his balance.

“Yeah… just,” Tommy had to swallow before he could speak again. “Bit dizzy.”

“Shhh!”

Both Danny and Tommy looked over to Freddie, who was frozen, half bent over the fuse for the load of dynamite they’d placed.  
He lifted his finger to his lips, eyes wide with anticipation of the next sound he’d hear through the not so thick soil between them and the Germans.  
The next time, they all heard them. Voices, whispered voices not very far away, then careful scratching and digging.

Tommy felt Danny’s frantic breaths hot on his neck, his hand closed around Tommy’s upper arm and squeezed tighter and tighter.  
“They’re gonna break through, they’re gonna kill us. They’re gonna kill us. They’re gonna kill me.”

Tommy felt sick. He didn’t know if from fear or withdrawal. It didn’t matter now anyways. Freddie produced a box of matches from his trouser pocket.  
Danny’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened wide.  
“N-”  
Tommy slapped his own hand over Danny’s mouth before he could get anything out. Freddie lit the match and all three of them flinched with the scratching and sizzling noise it produced.  
Freddie made eye contact with Tommy, who nodded and pushed Danny to turn towards the way out.  
Once Tommy had managed to force Danny into a stumbling run back, Freddie lit the fuse and bolted.

They reached the ladder in good time, and ushered Danny to climb it first.

“Now you go,” Freddie panted, hands on his knees.

“You go.” Tommy insisted and this time it was him to give Freddie a light push.

He was glad when Freddie shrugged, said that they didn’t have time for this shit and started climbing. Looking down at his own hands he couldn’t help but notice the now uncontrollable shaking and the way his vision went black and fuzzy around the edges. The run had been too much for his body and suddenly Tommy was scared he wouldn’t be able to make it up the ladder anymore.  
Once Freddie was halfway up, he stopped and turned to look down into the hole where Tommy still stood like frozen.

“Oi! Tom! Get the fuck up here!” he yelled but Tommy barely heard him. Freddie saw him sway lightly, one hand on the lowest of the ladder rungs, before his body bent at his middle and he emptied whatever was left inside of him of last night’s cup of tea onto the soil in one quick retch. Tommy’s hand slipped from the ladder, and Freddie took two rungs at once to get back down there just before Tommy landed in his own sick.

“Shit,” Freddie slapped his friend’s cheek hard a few times, but Tommy just blinked sluggishly. “Fuck. Fuck, Tom what is going on with you?!”  
He dragged Tommy into an upright position, grabbed his cold hand and placed it on the ladder again.  
“I need you to help, Tom, for fuck’s sake! I can’t get you out if you don’t help!”

“I take him. You go up the ladder behind us and lend us a hand if we need it, Private Thorne.

Freddie looked up confusedly to find their Captain standing in front of him in the tunnel. Hance scooped Tommy up as if it was nothing, slung his left arm around his shoulder and nudged Tommy’s bare feet towards the ladder with his boots.  
The strange thing was that it kind of worked.  
Tommy didn’t seem to register any of those things happening around him, but after Hance had hoisted him up the first few rungs, his feet started to cooperate on their own, and Freddie only had to grab his ankles once or twice to guide them to the next step.  
Danny was waiting for them at the tunnel entrance and helped lift Tommy out of the hole once he was in reach.  
Freddie scrambled out just in time to hear the thundering blow of dynamite go up, followed by a cloud of smoke rising from the hole.  
Captain Hance sat on his bottom, wheezing heavily in the unforgiving heat and daylight, just like Danny and Freddie, while Tommy lay completely still where they had dropped him. Just a small heap of uniform, until life shot back into his bones and he wriggled on the ground a few times before the retches came back.

“Get the man a stretcher, for fuck’s sake!” Hance roared towards a group of young recruits who’d been watching the scene with great interest but quickly ran to do as they were told.  
“And you two,” Hance pointed towards Danny, then Freddie. “Go and find his older brother. Tell him I need to speak to him.”

When neither of the men obeyd right away, he sighed and added: “Need to speak to family first alright? Tried talking to him already but… Look, I might have something to do with…,” he motioned towards Tommy’s miserable form, “-that. And that’s why I want to speak to his brother first.”

Danny and Freddie nodded and both got up to search for Arthur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so happy you are still with me, dear reader!  
Thank you so much!  
I hope this chapter wasn't a disappointment to any of you who have read this story from the very modest beginning up until now...
> 
> Leave me some words of wisdom and constructive criticism, yes?


End file.
